It consists of a flame ionization detector, preceded by a hydrogenating reactor, which converts CO2 and CO into methane CH4.
The catalyst traditionally consists of a 2% coating of Ni in the form of nickel nitrate deposited on a chromatographic packing material.
Nickel catalyst replacement and conditioning steps are time consuming and require operator skill to perform properly.
The Jetanizer utilizes the heater and hydrogen supply of the FID, reducing the need for additional fittings and temperature control.
Similarly to the polyarc reactor, the Jetanizer is resilient to poisoning by compounds containing sulfur, halogens, nitrogen, oxygen, and others.
[6] This technique enables the accurate quantification of any number of compounds that contain carbon beyond just CO and CO2, including those with low sensitivity in the FID such as carbon disulfide (CS2), carbonyl sulfide (COS), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), formamide (CH3NO), formaldehyde (CH2O) and formic acid (CH2O2).
In addition to increasing the sensitivity of the FID to particular compounds, the response factors of all species become equivalent to that of methane, thereby minimizing or eliminating the need for calibration curves and the standards they rely on.