Analysis of Minor Components in Water Using the IRSpirit

Water absorbs strongly in the mid-infrared region, which makes it difficult to detect and identify solutes in low concentration aqueous solutions. The water bands simply overwhelm spectral contributions of minor components. Several processing and sampling techniques have been developed to get around this issue. For meaningful results however, these methods require both stability and sensitivity of the FTIR instrument.
This article describes a difference spectrum method and sample condensation technique using the compact IRSpirit, a stable and sensitive compact FTIR instrument.