EVALUATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF VARIOUS UNIVERSAL AND SELECTIVE DETECTORS FOR SULFUR DETERMINATION IN NATURAL-GAS

In the present contribution, the performance of a number of commercial ly available selective and universal detectors that can be used in the analysis of sulfur components in natural gas is evaluated in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, reproducibility, quenching effect, stabilit y, and compound dependence of the sulfur response, Investigated detect ors include the sulfur chemiluminescence, the flame photometric, the e lectron capture, the mass spectrometric, the thermal conductivity, and the flame ionization detector, The sulfur chemiluminescence detector was found to have the best overall performance, e.g,, low picogram amo unts of sulfur can be detected accurately and the linear dynamic range is more than five orders of magnitude. After careful optimization, th e sulfur response of this detector was found to be almost compound ind ependent, All other detectors, including the flame photometric and the electron capture detector, have more or less compound dependent respo nses.