Carbon monoxide gas detection system based on mid-infrared spectral absorption technique

Abstract

Based on infrared spectral absorption technique, a carbon monoxide (CO) detection system was developed using the fundamental absorption band at the wavelength of 4.6 μm of CO molecule and adopting pulse-modulated wideband incandescence and dual-channel detector. The detection system consists of pulse-modulated wideband incandescence, open ellipsoid light-collec- tor gas-cell, dual-channel detector, main-control and signal-processing module. By optimizing open ellipsoid light-collector gas- cell, the optical path of the gas absorption reaches 40 cm, and the amplitude of the electrical signal from the detector is 2 to 3 times larger than the original signal. Therefore, by using the ellipsoidal condenser, the signal-to-noise ratio of the system will be to some extent increased to improve performance of the system. With the prepared standard CO gas sample, sensing characteris- tics on CO gas were investigated. Experimental results reveal that, the limit of detection (LOD) is about 10 ppm; the relative er- ror at the LOD point is less than 14%, and that is less than 7. 8% within the low concentration range of 20~180 ppm; the maxi- mum absolute error of 50 min long-term measurement concentration on the 0 ppm gas sample is about 3 ppm, and the standard deviation is as small as 0. 18 ppm. Compared with the CO detection systems utilizing quantum cascaded lasers (QCLs) and dis- tributed feedback lasers (DFBLs), the proposed sensor shows potential applications in CO detection under the circumstances of coal-mine and environmental protection, by virtue of high performance-cost ratio, simple optical-path structure, etc.