H138-0009
How Mini-Ruedi Rüssel sniffs the world or real time insitu (noble) gas determination

Monday, 14 December 2020
Poster
Rolf Kipfer1,2, UI Group3, Matthias Stefan Brennwald1, Yama Tomonaga3 and Ruedi Rüssel3, (1)EAWAG Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Duebendorf, Switzerland, (2)ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, (3)EAWAG Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Water Resources and Drinking Water, Duebendorf, Switzerland
Abstract:
The currently available methods for determining (noble) gases in terrestrial fluids and water are laboratory-based, expensive and only allow limited number of samples to be analysed. Conventional techniques fall short in

  • resolving (noble) gas patterns in space (high resolution gas mapping)
  • determining the dynamics of (noble) gas / liquid exchange at short time scales being relevant for environmental processes (oxygen input during bank infiltration), or
  • in analysing the gas evolution at particular sites (gas emanation at faults)

These experimental restrictions impede the powerful concepts of terrestrial noble gas geochemistry from being more widely adapted in environmental science and (tracer) hydrology.

To ease these restrictions, a simple and robust mass spectrometric system (gas-equilibrium-membrane-inlet-mass spectrometry: GE-MIMS, 1, 2) was developed to quasi-continuously analyse the gas composition in fluid matrices. Our new, second-generation system, 'Mini-Ruedi-Rüssel' (MRR, www.gasometrix.com, 1) is self-contained and portable (< 40 kg, < 40 W, e.g. from car batteries) and allows the quantitative and simultaneous determination of He, Ar, Kr, N2, O2, CH4, CO2 (and even H2) concentrations in terrestrial fluids under field conditions within 15 min.

MRR-systems were applied to analyse gas release during stimulated fracking experiments [3], to quantify denitrification and N2 production during river-groundwater exchange [4], and to determine the gas evolution in demonstration experiments for nuclear waste disposal [5].

This presentation describes the basic and robust technology of the MMR system and discusses some recent field applications.

[1] ES&T 2012, 46, 8288-829650. [2] ES&T 2016, 50, 13455-13463. [3] Scientific Report 2020, 10, 6949. [4] ES&T 2020, 54, 1562-1572. [5] Appl. Geochem. 2019, 234-243.

UI Group1,2, Matthias S. Brennwald1, Yama Tomonaga1, Ruedi Rüssel1, Rolf Kipfer1,2

1 Environmental Isotopes Group, Dept. of Water Resources and Drinking Water, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland, kipfer@eawag.ch

2Institute for Geochemistry and Petrology, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland

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