Estrange places to find a chromatographer, Part II: Thermoelectrical plant

Photo by Tomhe

 I do not consider myself a man with “networking” but I know some people, and was during some long distance car travels that I had my most important “class” on the fuel topic.

First class: it is incredibly simple all the chemistry involved in the process of burn something, like wood to coal and coal (or whatever) to CO2.

In many countries people burn wood(biomass) to create coal. Basically you pyrolyze the carbohydrates (mainly) and finish with Carbon:

C6H12O6 + heat +12O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O (1)

C6H12O6 + heat + little O2 → C + CO + H₂O (2)

Equation 2 has nothing new, but what is cool is that you can stop in the middle of way:

C6H12O6 + heat →6CO + 6H2 (3)

Equation 3 describe the gasification of solid fuel and the result is the Syngas (Synthesis gas), which was used since second war as source for preparing liquid fuels with help of catalysts.

But what this has to do with chromatography? Well in the second car travel I met a man who worked exactly monitoring equation 3 with GC.

His main work was on research with new energy fields, but this technology is widely used and one of the problems in the process is that you have more than just carbohydrates on biomass, In the end of reaction you also can find SO2, Volatile Organic compounds, CO and NOx (NO and NO2) which all create environmental concerns and need to be measured.

For finish, most of work was done with packed columns, from Porapak family and molecular sieves, something really different for me “an organic”, even more than a sample matrix that can explode.