Combustion analysis
Applications for combustion analysis involve only the elements of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), and sulfur (S) as combustion of materials containing them convert these elements to their oxidized form (CO2, H2O, NO or NO2, and SO2) under high temperature high oxygen conditions.[1] A combustion train is an analytical tool for the determination of elemental composition of a chemical compound.The combustion train allows the determination of carbon and hydrogen in a succession of steps: Analytical determination of the amounts of water and carbon dioxide produced from a known amount of sample gives the empirical formula.[3] This instrument calculates the percentages of elemental concentrations based on the Dumas method, using flash combustion of the sample to cause an instantaneous oxidization into simple compounds which are then detected with thermal conductivity detection or infrared spectroscopy.The water vapor, carbon dioxide and other products can be separated via gas chromatography and analysed via a thermal conductivity detector.