Ammonia in power plant emission

Ammonia monitoring is needed in most schemes for denitrification of power plant emission. In the PALAMON system we use a 500 MHz tunable, single mode, single line, CO2 laser as light source for a low pressure, high temperature, photoacoustic cell. With this cell we can resolve the sR(5,O) line of the ammonia spectrum, and suppress the interfering C02(9R30) absorption line down to a lppm NH3 detection limit. The validity of the measured ammonia concentrations is strongly dependent on details of the sampling system and on the reliability of the calibration routines. In particular calibration with certified mixtures of NH3:N2 has proved insufficient due to the multiple and long time constants caused by adsorption of ammonia to different materials in the system. Presence of water vapor in the gas greatly reduces these time constants. Therefore a number of methods for simple production of moist calibration gases from macroscopic amounts of NH3 are applied. The calibrations are translated to response from an easily managable absorber in order to allow automated recalibration of the photoacoustic response. Data from a field test of the system, and calibration data will be presented.