Rapid Identification of Atmospheric Gaseous Pollutants Using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy Combined with Independent Component Analysis

Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is a rapid and nondestructive technology for monitoring atmospheric quality. The identification of each component from the FTIR spectra is a prerequisite for the accurate quantitative analysis of gaseous pollutants. Due to the overlap of different gas absorption peaks and the interference of water vapor in the actual measurement, the existing identification methods of gas spectra have drawbacks of low identification rate and the inability to carry out real-time online analysis in atmospheric quality monitoring. In this work, independent component analysis (ICA) is applied to the spectral separation of heavily overlapped spectra of gaseous pollutants. The proposed method is validated by the analysis of mixture spectra obtained in laboratory and actual atmospheric spectra collected from stationary source. The average time consumption of separation process is less than 0.2 seconds, and the identification rate of experimental gases is up to 100%, as shown by the results of peak searching and the analysis of the correction coefficient between the separated spectra and the standard spectra database. The identification results of actual atmospheric spectra demonstrated that the proposed method can effectively identify the gaseous pollutants whose concentration changes in the measured spectra, and it is a promising qualitative spectral analysis tool that can shorten the identification time, as well as increase the identification rate. Therefore, this method can be a useful alternative to traditional qualitative identification methods for real-time online atmospheric pollutant detection.