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Low-Flow Pressure Gradient Pumping for Active Absorption of CO2 on a Molecular Sieve

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2016

Peng Cheng*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China Xi’an AMS Center and Province Key Laboratory, Xi’an 710043, China
Shugang Wu
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China Xi’an AMS Center and Province Key Laboratory, Xi’an 710043, China
Yunchong Fu
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China Xi’an AMS Center and Province Key Laboratory, Xi’an 710043, China
Xiaohu Xiong
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China Xi’an AMS Center and Province Key Laboratory, Xi’an 710043, China
Zhenchuan Niu
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China Xi’an AMS Center and Province Key Laboratory, Xi’an 710043, China
Yukun Fan
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China Xi’an AMS Center and Province Key Laboratory, Xi’an 710043, China
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].

Abstract

The authors have developed an active absorption system combining a molecular sieve with a pressure gradient as a way to overcome the shortcomings of the phosphoric acid solution displacement method. Taking advantage of the pressure gradient produced between the inside and outside of a bottle, as water moves through it, CO2 in the atmosphere can actively be absorbed onto a molecular sieve in its pathway. A comparative study showed that the technique was in agreement with the phosphoric acid displacement method, within error. We applied the new method to collect not only atmospheric CO2 samples, but also CO2 samples from soil respiration to verify its utility. Simple yet practical, our method is well suited to extended collection times in a variety of environments, and capable of providing relatively large amounts of carbon for high-precision accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C analyses of atmospheric samples.

Type
Rapid Event in the Natural Atmospheric 14C Content
Copyright
© 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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Footnotes

Selected Papers from the 2015 Radiocarbon Conference, Dakar, Senegal, 16–20 November 2015

References

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