Portable infrared meters

Portable infrared meter—more specific than the flame ionization meter but requires careful calibration for accurate measurements of a wide range of solvents. 

There is a variety of portable devices that give direct readings of certain gases or vapors, such as oxygen meters, combustible gas meters that indicate the presence of particular flammable gases, and portable infrared analyzers, and gas chromatographs for assessing many different materials. 

S. Morimoto. A nondestructive NIR spectrometer Development of a portable fruit quality meter. In 10th Intenational Conference on Near Infrared Spectroscopy, Kyongju, Korea, R. K. Cho, A. M. C. Davies, eds. NIR Publication, UK, 2002. 

An estimated 2.8 million capacitors are in use in the USA. About 2000 of them rupture every year, causing spillage into the environment. As in the case of transformers, there are no tools to predict capacitor failure. Soil samples have to be tested for contamination, and the solid PCB-containing material must be shredded prior to incineration. The utility industry considers it to be cost-ineffective to recover the part/parts of the contaminated capacitors. Portable screening devices such as x-ray fluorescence meters for transformer oil, acoustical detectors to detect the ultrasonic sound from a faltering capacitor, and an infrared scanner to measure the temperature-rise of the faltering capacitor have been studied in the field (Miller, 1982). 

The portable respiration device built at the Polytechnic University of Valencia was used as an indirect open calorimeter, since it is equipped with an air entry and a mass flow meter that automatically totalizes the air volume and send an aliquot sample to the gas impermeable collection bag. The CO2 and CH analyzers ranged between 0.0 and 1.5% and 0.0 and 0.15%, respectively, operating on infrared principle whereas O2 analyzer is working on a paramagnetic principle with a range of 19 to 21%. 

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