Research tech Question: Does anybody here know how to measure the concentration of 1-hexanol?

Question

I am using a ppbRAE PID monitor to measure vaporized chemicals and their concentrations in olfactory irritation experiments. Every time I try to measure the system's concentration, the reading starts low and continues to build. I have found no leaks or humidity points in the tubing of the olfactometer system. My PID is clean and new as is the UV lamp. Does anyone know how I can get a stable concentration reading?

Answer 1

Oooh, a real science question. I'm not an expert on what you're trying to do, but some thoughts:
1) Are you trying to measure the concentration in the gas phase? In liquid just take an NMR (add a standard of known concentration if necessary)--100% quantitative.
2) If you're trying to measure this stuff in the gas phase and only care about gas phase measurements, here are some thoughts from someone who's not an expert:
* hexanol and water are not miscible. However, depending on how you prepare the solution, they might be temporarily mixing (oil droplets will mix with water then take a while to separate), and so you might be seeing the separation of hexanol from the water as a function of time, and since the hexanol would float its concentration in the gas phase over the solution would dramatically increase.
* your experimental setup may be generating heat which would warm up the sample and cause the hexanol to start evaporating faster.
* I have no idea about any of the specifics of your system--I don't even know what a PID is. But if your detector is very sensitive and your tubing is new sometimes new tubing and even new plastics can give off the solvents in which they were made, and something that's hexanol like is at least remotely believable. To check for this do a trial run where you have added no hexanol (or anything like it). If you still measure hexanol, then its coming from the tubing, or the plastic, or the air-conditioning in your lab (you'd be shocked at the chemicals that old air-conditioners put out), etc.

Anything else you'll need a specific expert in your field. If you look at the vast bulk of questions on here you'll realize they're from high-schoolers too lazy to even try to do their homework, so I'm not too sure you'll get lucky here.

On the other hand, I'd appreciate it if you let me know whether any of what I said was useful.

Answer 2

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