Abstract

Natural gas has become an indispensable energy source for daily life, but natural gas leakage brings great harm to both residents’ life and property as well as the atmospheric environment. The severe harm caused by natural gas leakage can be prevented by taking appropriate measures during the early stages of the leak. In this paper, proton transfer reaction mass spec- trometer (PTR-MS) was used to detect the standard gas of simulated natural gas components by using a new reagent ion, CF 3 + ion. The study demonstrates that CF 3 + ions can chemically react with ethane in natural gas, resulting in the production of C 2 H 5 + and F + (C 2 H 6 ) ions. By plotting the standard curve, the detection limits of m/z 29 and 49 product ions were calculated to be 6.251 µg/m 3 and 6.87 µg/m 3 , respectively, with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) ranging from 1.8% to 3.5%. It can fully meet the demand of early trace leakage detection of natural gas, and greatly improve the early warning capability of natural gas leakage, and provide reliable protection of the residents' life and property as well as the atmospheric environment. It also pro- vides a new research method for early warning detection of natural gas leakage.