A Method to Obtain a Good Infrared Spectrum of the Wet Acetone Gas Sample without Any Drying Pretreatment

Water vapor in the beam of a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer or/and in a gas cell is a major source of interference in the infrared measurement of a gas sample. In general, in order to eliminate the effect of water vapor, we have to completely remove these molecules before the measurement of any spectrum. Herein, we provide an approach to collect an IR spectrum of a gas (wet acetone) sample free from water vapor interference without any drying pretreatment. After dozens of scans, the air atmosphere in the sample compartment of the FTIR spectrometer will be slightly adjusted by small amounts of dry air or wet air (room air) depending on the property of water vapor lines (absorbance >0 or absorbance <0). Water vapor lines will then gradually disappear when the ensuing collection process is continued. The experiment results demonstrated that this method is a facile and very effective way to remove water vapor interference. Moreover, this method works still well for the measurement at 0.5 cm(-1) resolution, typically used in the gas infrared measurement.