One of the major challenges in environmental analysis concerns the rapid and sensitive detection of metals emitted from combustion stacks. An interesting concept for real time analysis is to convert airborne metal oxide particles in a flow reactor into relatively volatile compounds of a single class, and then analyze in the gas phase. In this project, kinetics of chemical volatilization reaction between Sb₂O₃ and HCl was investigated. To achieve this a laboratory volatilization flow reactor was built and data was collected for the volatilization reaction in terms of conversion, inlet and outlet concentrations and flow rates. A mathematical model was also developed to regress the data to find the kinetic parameters for this reaction.

It was shown by the experimental results that by varying HCl rate and keeping dust rate constant, there was no marked effect on conversion and it almost remained constant. But the volumetric rate of N2 will definitely effect conversion. Also by increasing reactor set point temperature from 300C to 400C, a significant increase in conversion was observed The data and kinetic parameters obtained from this project are important for facilitating the design of an airborne metal CEM and enhancing metals detection.