New Portable FTIR Gas Analyser Detects Almost Any Gas

Gasmet Technologies Oy (Finland) has announced the launch of the DX4040 – a portable FTIR gas analyser that enables the field measurement of literally thousands of gases.

The DX4040 is the second generation of the world’s first truly portable FTIR analyser which brought laboratory grade gas analysis into the field, and thereby brought the benefits of multiparameter FTIR gas analysis to monitoring applications involving industrial safety, medical gases, fumigants/pesticides, soil gas, contaminated land, first responders/hazmat, fire investigation, toxic industrial chemicals, chemical warfare agents and many others.

The new instrument is easier to use and more flexible than its predecessor. However, Gasmet CEO Mikko Suuntala says: "The most important development lies in the ability of the device to identify unknown gases in the field (at the touch of one button) when using a new version of the unit's Calcmet software on a Windows tablet pc."

Users of the DX4040's predecessor will be pleased to learn that the unknown gas identification capability is retrospectively applicable to existing DX4030 analysers when using the new software and a tablet PC.

The Calcmet Pro software makes it possible to retrospectively identify almost any gas from the recorded spectra. However, for those users investigating known species the unit can be used with a handheld Bluetooth PDA running Calcmet Lite and incorporating a 3G modem, camera and GPS so that time and location are assigned to each analysis. Using the DX4040 with a PDA is a popular choice because it enables the simultaneous display, in almost real-time, of up to 25 gases.

Summarising the benefits of the DX4040 Mikko Suuntala says: “This instrument is unique; it is able to identify both organic and inorganic compounds, whilst also storing sample spectra for post-measurement analysis using a chemical library of over 5000 compounds. There are no sensors that might need future replacement and operation is extremely easy; no sample preparation is required and calibration is simply a zero check with nitrogen or air.”