Migliori Comunicazioni 108° Congresso Nazionale SIF, Milano 12-16 settembre 2022

The Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) refers to a group of toxic organic chemical species, usually found in work sites, able to evaporate at room temperature thanks to their high vapor pressure. They can easily spread in a close environment and are recognized to be dangerous for human health. This is the main reason to be monitored in real time. In this talk, we discuss a novel monitoring system based on Infrared (IR) spectroscopy able to measure very low concentration of various VOCs down to sub-ppm and to discriminate among different chemical species. We present the experimental setup and the procedure to measure VOCs concentration from their IR absorbances. Here, the calibration for four VOCs (styrene, acetone, ethanol and isopropanol) is carried out, demonstrating that the technique offers the possibility to discriminate low concentrations and obtain very accurate quantitative information. Mixtures of acetone/styrene are studied obtaining optimal results in the extrapolation of their individual concentration (in ppm) just starting from their whole IR spectrum. This work is a very promising starting point for building a portable setup for the detection at very high sensitivity.