Effective and inexpensive gas chromatography method for detection of trace level SO2 in H2 fuel

Gas chromatography (GC) analysis of sulfer dioxide is challenging because SO2 is a highly mobile and chemically active molecule. For the conventional GC method with flame photometric detector (FPD) and direct-injection, it is often ineffective particularly when the SO2 level is as low as on the trace level. In this paper, a modified GC system integrated with an adsorption-desorption device was developed to detect the trace SO2 impurity in H2 fuel. Adsorbent GDX-502 is used in the adsorber to adsorb/collect SO2 from the sample gas and desorb/release it in a concentrated flow so that the conventional GC at downstream could detect it with an acceptable accuracy.