GPE-EPIC
2nd International Congress on Green Process Engineering
2nd European Process Intensification Conference
14-17 june 2008 - Venice (Italy)
VOLATILE ORGANIC CARBON MEASUREMENTS IN FIRE EMISSIONS FROM
TROPICAL OPEN BURNING
Nasrin Aghamohammadi, Nik Meriam Nik Sulaiman and Mohamed Kheireddine Arouac

Chemical Engineering Department,
Engineering faculty, University of Malaya, 50603,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
e-mail : nasrinam01@gmail.com, meriam@um.edu.my
Abstract. The concentration of Volatile Organic Carbon (VOC) was characterized absorbent tube where all VOCs are captured
by the Tenax adsorption resin. After a pre-determined sampling duration, the Tenax tube is capped and analysed with ATD
(Automated Thermal Desorption) linked with GCMS. The tube put inside the machine and it automatically did the desorbing of
captured VOC. After which it immediately sent it to the GCMS. Hence there was no human involve in extraction. Thus eliminate
human error and loss of analytes. The level of VOCs were determined during burning of two specious of biomass ( Sepetir and
Sentang) . The concentration of Alkane –Aliphatic, Alkane –Cyclic, Aromatic hydrocarbon, Furan + derivatives , Alcohol , Acid +
Ester , Phenol + derivatives, Ketone, Aldehyde, siliceous compound, phosphorus compound, Sulphur compound, Nitrogen
compound, Phthalate for Sepetir were respectively: 1.038, 0.105 , 3.186, 4.856, 2.077, 2.317, 0.214, 0.665, 1.517, 0.689, 0.0 19,
0.823, 0.044, ND and for Sentang were : 1.699, ND, 1.246, 6.345, 0.54, 10.289, 0.292, 2.443, 0.197, 0.21, ND, 0.809, 0.174, and
0.034mg/m3decane/kg. The results of this study indicate that the difference in concentration of both emissions implies emission
source of biomass are very important for carbon flux to atmosphere. The above results agree with the fact that furan is the most
dominant species in both emission sources of biomass.
Key-words. Automated Thermal Desorption, Alkene, Alkane, Forest fire, tropical emission,
Volatile Organic Carbon,