Intercomparison of infrared cavity leak-out spectroscopy and gas chromatography-flame ionization for trace analysis of ethane

Comparison of two different methods for the measurement of ethane at the parts-per-billion (ppb) level is reported. We used cavity leak-out spectroscopy (CALOS) in the 3 mu m wavelength region and gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) for the analysis of various gas samples containing ethane fractions in synthetic air. Intraday and interday reproducibilities were studied. Intercomparing the results of two series involving seven samples with ethane mixing ratios ranging from 0.5 to 100 ppb, we found a reasonable agreement between both methods. The scatter plot of GC-FID data versus CAILOS data yields a linear regression slope of 1.07 +/- 0.03. Furthermore, some of the ethane mixtures were checked over the course of 1 year, which proved the long-term stability of the ethane mixing ratio. We conclude that CAILOS shows equivalent ethane analysis precision compared to GC-FID, with the significant advantage of a much higher time resolution (< 1 s) since there is no requirement for sample preconcentration. This opens new analytical possibilities, e.g., for real-time monitoring of ethane traces in exhaled human breath.