Hazardous Gas Detection Sensor Using Broadband Light-Emitting Diode-Based Absorption Spectroscopy for Space Applications

Abstract

As space travel matures and extended duration voyages become increasingly common, it will be necessary to include arrays of early fire detection systems aboard spacefaring vessels, space habitats, and in spacesuits. As gasses that are relevant to combustion and pyrolysis have absorption features in the midinfrared range, it is possible to utilize absorption spectroscopy as a means of detecting and quantifying the concentration of these hazardous compounds. Within this work, a sensor for detecting carbon dioxide has been designed and tested autonomously on a high-altitude balloon flight. The sensor utilizes a 4.2-mm lightemitting diode source, amplitude modulation to characterize species concentrations, and frequency modulation to characterize ambient temperature. Future work will include expanding the sensor design to detect other gases, and demonstrating suborbital flight capability.

Review and Perspective: Gas Separation and Discrimination Technologies for Current Gas Sensors in Environmental Applications

“…The transmitter emits light, which is reflected by the targeted VOCs in a gas cell and then detected by the receiver. 87 The transmitter can utilize various IR transmitting technologies, such as thermal emitters with MEMS, 88,89 light-emitting diodes (LEDs), 90 and quantum cascade lasers (QCLs). 91 On the other hand, the IR receiver plays a critical role in detecting the reflected light and analyzing its spectra.…”

Review of the gas breakdown physics and nanomaterial-based ionization gas sensors and their applications

“…The current industry is experiencing a sharp increase in the use of hazardous substances, such as toxic, corrosive, dangerously reactive, and flammable gases, which are potentially perilous to the surrounding living things. Gas sensors are used to detect or trace such gases or organic vapors typically in air or low-pressure environments [1][2][3][4][5][6] for a wide range of applications, including medicine [3,7], environmental monitoring [8][9][10], industrial processes [11][12][13], hazardous gas safety [14,15], and aerospace technology [16,17], as shown in table 1. An ideal gas sensor must be able to detect a specific gas in gas mixtures (selectivity) by measuring the electrical signal; gas sensor must respond quickly and sensitively to even small amounts of target gas (i.e.…”

“…These gas sensors have response times of several seconds and recovery times to the initial state of hundreds of seconds; this time is so long because of slow surface processes involved (e.g. adsorption and dissociation)-these characteristics do not satisfactorily meet the above-mentioned requirements: fast response time and sensitivity, reversibility, and long lifetime [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. On the other hand, in the case of physical gas sensors, such as a quadrupole mass analyzer, it is possible to effectively separate ion species with different mass to charge ratios by ionizing the target gas.…”

Transconductance Amplifier for Optical Metrology Applications of Light-Emitting Diodes

“…Therefore, LEDs are typically driven with current instead of voltage. While constant current is often used, many measurement techniques require the use of current pulses [5]- [7], pulsewidth modulation (PWM) [7]- [10], amplitude modulation (AM) [11], [12], or more complex modulation schemes [13], [14].…”