Development of new applications in industrial backgrounds based on Middle Infrared spectroscopy (MID IR) using low cost and uncooled sensors

Abstract

Air pollution due to the greenhouse emissions of pollutants by vehicles, is an issue whose gravity is increasing, and it gains more significance for big cities such as Madrid. Controlling the composition of vehicle fuel can reduce pollutant emissions from combustion and it can also improve the performance of the vehicle engine. The intentional addition of offspecification fuel or contaminants can occur during the distribution of fuels and it is difficult to detect, unless the fuel is analyzed at every stage or the fuel quality is carefully monitored. Establishing a fuel effective compliance program regarding specifications is important to ensure that fuels sold at gas stations meet all the requirements, and at the same time it is challenging because fuel is manipulated by many different agents along the distribution chain. It may also result costly, as the equipments used to measure the fuel composition are based on laboratory chromatographs and spectrometers. These techniques need of highly qualified staff, and large amount of samples, time and laboratory reagents consumption. Consequently, it becomes necessary the use of simple, fast, and accurate techniques to carry out this quality control process. Although optical methods (non destructive) such as Infrared and RAMAN Spectroscopy have been widely applied and studied, they still pose drawbacks such as the lack of in-field applicability and the high cost of the equipment currently employed for it.