An Infrared Search System Based on Direct Comparison of Interferograms

A compound identification system for gas chromatography/Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy data has been developed based on the direct comparison of interferograms. A multidimensional vector approach is used to form compound-specific vectors from the interferograms of mixture components. Comparisons are made with a set of known compound vectors by calculating how close together any two vectors lie in space. This system is used to identify the components of several synthetic mixtures.