Application
This selectivity can be a problem or an advantage. For example, a FID is excellent for detecting methane in nitrogen, since it would respond to the methane but not to the nitrogen.
FIDs are best for detecting hydrocarbons and other easily flammable components. They are very sensitive to these components, and response tends to be linear across a wide range of concentrations.
However, an FID destroys most, if not all, of the components it is detecting. Contrarily, with a TCD the components can continue on to another detector after passing through the TCD; thus it is considered a non-destructive detector (this can be useful for analyzing complex mixtures where different detectors are needed because of differing detector selectivities). However, with an FID, most components are destroyed and no further detection is possible.
For this reason, in multiple-detector situations, the FID is almost always the last detector. An FID essentially can only detect components which can be burned. Other components may be ionized by simply passing through the FID's flame, but they tend not to create enough signal to rise above the noise of the detector.
FIDs can also be integrated into portable measurement devices and used, for example, for Landfill gas monitoring and fugitive emissions monitoring.
Read more about this topic: Flame Ionization Detector
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“If you would be a favourite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)