USE OF STATIC MIXERS FOR ENHANCING STANDARD CURVES IN THE ANALYSIS OF BIOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT GASES

Abstract

Assessing the evolution of biological important gasses for postharvest studies of horticultural crops, as well as, elaborating and using calibration curves for this type of studies, are necessary tasks. Nevertheless, gas mixing to determine calibration curves is not always highly efficient. Usually, gas mixing takes place in a common gas container, assuming that gasses will mixed immediately. However, this is not necessarily true. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of a static mixers system on the elaboration of reliable calibration curves. Different dilutions of ethylene with nitrogen were prepared with and without using a static mixers system, for each reference point. Gas chromatography was used to evaluate gas concentrations. When the static mixers system was used for preparing the mix, a more reliable calibration curve was obtained and a significant reduction in the standard error (up to 87 %) was achieved. Thus, using a static mixers system allows more reliable calibration curves.