The separation is done by a built-in non-methane catalytic furnace: the sample passes through the furnace, methane is handled by the catalytic stage, and the analyzer computes the three values without an external converter box or a laboratory gas chromatograph.
High-temperature FID design
The flame ionization detector is a high-temperature design with a maximum temperature tolerance of 400 °C, which keeps heavy hydrocarbons vaporised through the measurement path instead of condensing on cold walls and vanishing from the result. A rear non-heating sampling pump draws the sample, and a built-in air source supports the flame and zero functions without external cylinders for those duties.
One-click calibration and a catalytic-efficiency evaluation routine keep the furnace honest: the instrument itself checks the conversion stage that its NMHC number depends on, and automatic flame sensing with automatic range switching keeps readings on scale during plume crossings.
Carry formats and field use
The PTM200 works hand-held or as a backpack, which suits stack-side testing, fence-line walks and vehicle-based surveys alike. Typical buyers are environmental monitoring teams, stack-testing contractors and industrial parks verifying NMHC emissions at coating, printing, petrochemical and solvent-use plants.
Pair it with the PTM100 where the programme needs compound-level VOC work as well: the PTM200 answers the regulatory NMHC question, while the PTM100's dual detectors serve component-by-component leak surveys.
Explosion-protection documentation, honestly read
The PTM200 is the page where this catalogue's discipline shows most clearly: explosion-protection parameters are published for this model, and they apply to this model. Buyers comparing instruments for classified-area entry should read the protection data here as printed — and should treat any seller who transfers one model's protection claims to another model as a warning sign. The correct procurement habit is documentary: the certificate set for the exact model, held by the buyer, checked against the area classification of the site.
Inside that documented envelope, the instrument earns its place on the breadth of its options: pumped or diffusion sampling, up to sixteen gases, a sensor catalogue spanning catalytic, infrared, PID, electrochemical, thermal-conductivity, semiconductor and optical principles. Sixteen channels is a ceiling, not a recommendation — configure for the streams actually measured, and let the headroom serve future streams rather than present vanity.
Sixteen gases and the calibration plan
A wide-channel instrument multiplies calibration logistics: several gas mixtures, several adapters, a bench session measured in hours unless it is organised. The professional pattern is a calibration matrix — which channels calibrate together, which gases are grouped, what the bump routine covers weekly versus the full calibration quarterly. Write the matrix when the instrument is configured; the configuration document and the calibration matrix are twins, and keeping both current is the real cost of owning a flagship — budgeted for, it is unremarkable; neglected, it is how flagships become shelf ornaments.
The sixteen-channel temptation, revisited as engineering
Sixteen channels is best understood as headroom for a family of duties rather than a single duty's requirement: the same instrument hull serves the classified-area entry kit this month, the process troubleshooting campaign next quarter, and the emissions investigation next year, reconfigured each time from its sensor catalogue. Owned that way — as a platform with a configuration dossier per duty — the flagship's economics resolve: its cost is shared across duties no single-purpose instrument could cover, and its calibration matrix is written per configuration rather than as one impossible annual event. Owned as a trophy — sixteen channels fitted because they could be — it becomes the shelf ornament its critics predict. The difference is entirely in the owning.
Explosion-protection paperwork deserves the same platform thinking: the certificate set belongs with the instrument's dossier, travels with it between duties, and is checked against each duty's area classification before the instrument is committed. Sites that lend flagship instruments between departments should lend the dossier with them, sealed to the case.
Sensor catalogue literacy
A catalogue spanning seven sensing principles is a small education, and buyers should extract it during evaluation: for each principle, ask what it measures best, what it cannot see, what poisons or fouls it, what its calibration gas is, and what its working life looks like in the intended streams. The answers, tabulated, become the beginnings of the configuration dossier — and a supplier who answers them fluently, with the awkward cases volunteered, is demonstrating the support the flagship will need in year four. The instrument is the lesser half of a flagship purchase; the knowledge system around it is the greater.
Glossary for classified-area portable analysis
Area classification — the zoning of a plant by the likelihood of flammable atmospheres, against which every instrument's protection documentation is checked. Protection concept — the engineering method (energy limitation, flameproof enclosure, pressurisation and their kin) by which equipment is made safe for a zone. Certificate set — the documents that evidence a specific model's protection, held by the owner and produced at audit. Temperature class — the ceiling on a device's surface temperature, matched against the gases' ignition temperatures of the area. Gas group — the family classification of flammable gases by their ignition behaviour, the other half of the certificate's address.
Configuration dossier — the record of a multi-duty instrument's fitted channels and settings per assignment. Calibration matrix — the bench plan that groups a wide-channel instrument's gases into an executable session. Hot work — the grinding, welding and cutting whose permits lean on the readings these instruments produce. Gas-free certificate — the documented verdict, signed against measurements, that a space may be entered or worked. Continuous duty classification — the rating that says how long a pump or sensor may run without rest. Intrinsically safe circuit — the energy-limited wiring concept whose barriers and entities must match as a system, not as parts.
The flagship's second life: training and standards
A wide-capability, well-documented instrument acquires a second career inside its owner's organisation: it becomes the reference against which simpler instruments are spot-checked, the training platform on which principle literacy is taught (seven sensing families in one case is a curriculum), and the investigation unit that settles arguments between departments. Organisations should recognise that career in the asset register — the flagship's value is partly its optionality, and optionality is spent wisely only when somebody owns the diary that deploys it. Left unmanaged, flagships are borrowed into oblivion; managed, they are the technical conscience of the fleet.
Documentation as a deliverable, restated
It bears repeating at the flagship tier because the sums are larger: the purchase is not complete when the instrument arrives but when its dossier does — certificates for the protection claims, the configuration record for the fitted channels, the calibration matrix, the cross-sensitivity tables for the fitted set, the spares and consumables list with the supplier's lead times. Buyers should write the dossier into the order as a deliverable with a retention against it. Suppliers who regard that as normal are the ones whose year-four support will also be normal, in the best sense of the word.
- Values read
- CH4, total hydrocarbons, NMHC — direct and continuous
- Detector
- High-temperature FID, max temperature tolerance 400 °C
- Separation
- Built-in non-methane catalytic furnace
- Sampling
- Rear non-heating sampling pump
- Air source
- Built in
- Calibration
- One-click calibration; catalytic-efficiency evaluation
- Flame handling
- Automatic flame sensing; automatic range switching
- Formats
- Hand-held or backpack
Measurement
Support systems
Carry
- Direct continuous CH4, THC and NMHC readings
- Built-in catalytic furnace — no external converter
- High-temperature FID tolerant to 400 °C
- Self-check of catalytic efficiency
- Hand-held or backpack carry
Send a target gas list, get a configuration
Quotations are built from the published parameters on this site. Tell us the gases, the ranges and the quantity — or the point schedule for a fixed project — and the reply comes back within 24 hours.
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