PTM100 Volatile Organic Gas Analyzer

A built-in database covers more than 200 VOC gases, so response factors and compound identification travel with the instrument instead of living in a separate correction table.

FID operation, made field-practical

Flame instruments earn their keep on accuracy but demand respect in handling. The PTM100 automates the fragile parts: the FID ignites automatically, flame temperature is monitored continuously, and the hydrogen supply shows both pressure and remaining time on screen, so the operator knows the flame's fuel state before it becomes a problem mid-survey.

The hand operator is a separate 6.5-inch touchscreen unit linked by Bluetooth or WiFi, which keeps the display and controls at the operator's hand while the analyzer body rides on the shoulder or a cart.

Survey work it serves

The design centre is leak detection and repair (LDAR) and fugitive-emission surveying: valves, flanges, pump seals, compressor seals and tank fittings read one by one, with readings attached to component tags. The same portability serves fence-line checks, remediation sites, soil-gas surveys and process troubleshooting where a fixed analyzer cannot go.

Explosion-protection design is published for both parts of the system — the host unit and the hand operator carry their own protection concepts for hazardous-area use (Ex db ia IIC T4 Gb for the host; Ex ib IIC T4 Gb and Ex ibD 21 T130 °C for the hand operator).

Specifying a PTM100

Tell us the survey standard your programme follows, the compounds of interest and the expected concentration band. Detector configuration, probe set and data workflow differ between a refinery LDAR programme and an environmental remediation survey, and the quotation should reflect the actual job.

Confined entries with extraction sampling

The PTM100 pattern — instrument outside, probe inside — is the conservative way to clear a space: the atmosphere is drawn up the line, measured by a multi-principle bench, and judged by someone standing in clean air. Its published protection levels for host and hand operator suit the dockside and plant environments where this work happens, and the RS485 data path lets the readings join the same record system as the site's fixed points, so the entry log and the plant log can be read together afterwards.

Extraction sampling has one law: respect the transport time. A reading taken before the line has purged is a reading of the line, not the space. The professional routine — purge, settle, record, then judge — takes minutes, and those minutes are the cheapest safety the project buys. Crews should also sample at levels: top, middle and bottom of the space, because stratification is the rule in still air, not the exception.

Multi-principle measurement in the field

Catalytic, electrochemical, infrared and thermal-conductivity principles in one field instrument let a single platform follow a job from flammability screening to toxic quantification to inert-gas verification. The practical consequence is logistical: one instrument to calibrate (with each principle's own gas), one battery and data routine, one case in the vehicle. The technical consequence is judgement: the operator must know which principle produced which number, because each has its interferences — and the instrument's value lies in an operator who does.

Hand operation and host: the two-ended instrument

Extraction systems divide the measurement between a host that thinks and a hand operator that goes: the probe travels into the space, up the ladder, across the dock, while the host's bench and recording stay in clean air. That division suits the way entry testing actually happens — one person at the hatch managing the line, the record and the communication, the readings arriving from wherever the probe has been sent. The specification should therefore treat the pair as the instrument: cable and line lengths matched to the site's geometry, the hand unit's protection matched to its travels, the host's data path matched to the record system that will hold the entry logs.

Multi-principle benches ask their operators for one specific competence: knowing which principle produced the number on the screen and what that principle is blind to in the current stream. Training for extraction instruments should be principle-by-principle, with the interference table for the fitted set printed and kept in the case — the case being where answers are needed, at the hatch, in the rain, with the entry waiting.

Where extraction beats diffusion, tallied

The tally is worth stating plainly because the pattern recurs across this catalogue. Extraction wins when the atmosphere must be judged before exposure, when the space is stratified and levels must be sampled in turn, when the stream is hot, wet or dirty enough to need conditioning, and when one instrument must serve many points in sequence. Diffusion wins on bodies, in motion, over long durations, and wherever simplicity is the safeguard. The PTM100 is the extraction argument in product form, and sites that run both patterns — extraction for the judgement, diffusion for the vigil — are not being extravagant; they are matching tools to the two different questions an entry asks.

Glossary for extraction (sample-draw) analysis

Extraction sampling — drawing the atmosphere to the instrument rather than carrying the instrument to the atmosphere. Host — the bench unit that measures, records and powers the system from clean air. Hand operator — the travelling probe unit that enters the hostile zone on the end of its line. Sample line — the tube whose length, material and condition are part of the measurement. Purge time — the interval for a fresh sample to displace the line's history, owed before any judgement. Multi-level sampling — the top, middle and bottom draws by which stratification is mapped rather than assumed away.

Protection rating — the published enclosure defence of host and hand unit against dust and water, read from the model's own documentation and no other's. Flame arrestor — the sintered barrier that lets gas pass and flame not, fitted where samples come from flammable atmospheres. Condensate management — the traps and slopes that keep the stream's water out of the bench. Data path — the RS485 or network route by which extraction readings join the site's records beside the fixed points'. Line leak test — the suction check that proves the sample is the space's air and not the room's, drawn in at a cracked fitting. Settling — the reading's arrival at the stream's value, watched for, not assumed.

Extraction work in the rain: a field note

Most extraction testing happens in unkind conditions — the dock in the rain, the tank farm in the wind, the pit in the dark — and the instrument's design either respects that or is left in the vehicle. Protection ratings on host and hand unit, controls that work in gloves, a display that reads in glare and in gloom, lines that do not kink at the first hatch edge: these are the specifications that decide whether the measurement happens at all on the difficult days, and the difficult days are disproportionately the dangerous ones. Evaluation teams should test candidate extraction instruments in weather, with gloves, at a real hatch, because the laboratory virtues are necessary and the field virtues are decisive.

The certificate at the end of the line

Extraction testing usually terminates in a signature: the space is fit, or it is not, and somebody's name stands under the readings. That signature is why the instrument's records matter as much as its sensors — the settled readings at each level, the times, the calibration state, all retrievable when the certificate is questioned weeks later by an investigator who was not there. Instruments and routines should be chosen to make the signer's evidence effortless, because a tester whose paperwork is painful will eventually shorten the testing to fit it, and the shortening will not announce itself.

Detectors

Standard

FID (flame ionization)

Second channel

PID (photoionization)

Compound library

More than 200 VOC gases built in

Flame management

Ignition

Automatic

Monitoring

Flame temperature monitoring

Fuel display

Hydrogen pressure and remaining time

Hand operator

Display

6.5-inch touchscreen

Link

Bluetooth / WiFi

Protection (published)

Host: Ex db ia IIC T4 Gb; Hand operator: Ex ib IIC T4 Gb, Ex ibD 21 T130 °C

• FID and PID detectors in one portable analyzer
• Built-in library of more than 200 VOC gases
• Automatic ignition with flame-temperature monitoring
• Hydrogen pressure and remaining-time display
• Wireless 6.5-inch touchscreen hand operator