Instrument: Carlo-Erba NA-1500 Elemental Analyzer

A laboratory instrument that simultaneously determines total nitrogen and total carbon from a wide range of organic and inorganic sediment samples. The sample is completely and instantaneously oxidised by flash combustion, which converts all organic and inorganic substances into combustion products. The resulting combustion gases pass through a reduction furnace and are swept into the chromatographic column by the carrier gas which is helium. The gases are separated in the column and detected by the thermal conductivity detector which gives an output signal proportional to the concentration of the individual components of the mixture. The instrument was originally manufactured by Carlo-Erba, which has since been replaced by Thermo Scientific (part of Thermo Fisher Scientific). This model is no longer in production.