The NIST Traceable Reference Material Program for Gas Standards

Bill Dorko, NTRM Program Coordinator, shown with a gas SRM Lot Standard, a gas SRM cylinder and a Primary Standard gas cylinder.

 Bill Dorko  

An NTRM (NIST Traceable Reference Material) is a reference material produced by a commercial supplier with a well-defined traceability linkage to NIST. This linkage is established via criteria and protocols defined by NIST that are tailored to meet the needs of the metrological community to be served. Reference materials producers adhering to these requirements will be allowed to use the NIST "NTRM" trademark. The concept was established to allow NIST to respond the increasing needs for high quality reference materials with constant human and financial resources.

The gas NTRM program was established in 1992 in partnership with EPA and Specialty Gas Companies as a means for providing end-users with the wide variety of certified gas standards needed to implement the "Emissions Trading" provision of the 1990 Clean Air Act. Gas NTRMs are produced and distributed by Specialty Gas Companies with NIST oversight of the production and involvement in the analysis, and can be developed for any pollutant, concentration and balance gas combination for which an NIST primary gas standard mixture exists. Certified concentration values are assigned by NIST according to a published protocol.

Since 1995, twelve commercial vendors have produced over 7000 NTRMs (>300 batches). It is estimated that these NTRMs have resulted in the production of over 400,000 EPA Protocol gas standards that are traceable to NIST. Production of an NTRM batch required 5 months on average, whereas, SRM production requires over 1 year.

Plans are being put in place to extend the Gas NTRM model for the commercial production of reference materials with a well-defined traceability to NIST, to other sectors of the commercial reference materials community.

For more information of the gas NTRM program please contact Frank Guenther (fguenther@.nist.gov) or William Dorko (wdorko@nist.gov).

Additional NTRM material:

If you need a paper copy of any of these documents, please contact the ACD Web Accessibility Coordinator by telephone at 301-975-3108, by facsimile at 301-926-8671, by email at sirk@nist.gov, or by mail at NIST, 100 Bureau Dr Stop 8390, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8390.

NIST Special Publication 260-126: "The NIST Traceable Reference Material Program for Gas Standards"

To request a copy of the NIST Special Publication 260-126 please send email to Frank Guenther.