The combustible gas sector requires for instrumentation capable to determine the composition and the quality of the gas mixtures present in the transport and distribution networks. The gas parameters need to be monitored in a wide interval, since mixtures are found within an extremely variable range. A compact, fast and highly sensitive instrument based on Raman spectroscopy has been developed with the specific aim to operate directly on-line. This approach is intrinsically non-invasive, since it needs a laser beam passing through the gas, and multi-species sensitive, since the different components of the gas mixture are simultaneously detected. The Raman scattering is stimulated by a laser diode centered at 455 nm with multi-mode emission and 1.5 W optical power. The laser is focused on a gas cell through a window, the Raman emission is collected by a grating spectrometer and finally acquired by a 2D camera. The measured spectra are fitted with the calibration dataset acquired at room temperature to achieve the mixture composition. The system is able to determine the main components of the natural gas: methane, heavier hydrocarbons, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The Heating Value (HV) is finally calculated using the ISO6976:2016 standard. Several certified gas mixtures have been tested with the instrument operated at different temperatures in the range from -20°C to 50°C, to prove the capability to operate in a wide industrial temperature range. Each measure requires less than 25 seconds, with a sample pressure of 6 bars. The calculated HV value lies in the ±0.5% error range.
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