IMPLEMENTING CHEMICAL SENSORS IN INDUSTRY - NOVEL APPROACHES

In the chemical industry, the need for real-time process and environmental control has elicited a great interest in chemical sensors. However, their successful introduction has not been achieved in spite of promising results at university laboratories. Ways of filling this gap will be demonstrated here. In many industrial applications, the measurand must be detected in the midst of many interfering substances which can be present in large excess. Because applications and their associated matrices vary widely, the sensing principle must be incorporated into a total analysis system (TAS), which will perform sample pretreatment, protect the sensor from aggressive matrices, and even provide a preliminary separation. This modular system is configured according to its exact application. Realized state-of-the-art TASs for process and environmental analytical applications as well as novel systems now containing chemical sensors will be presented.