High-Altitude Balloon Flight Demonstration of LED-Based NDIR Multi-Gas Sensor for Space Applications

Abstract

A sensor which measures the concentrations of CO and CO 2 aboard spacecraft could be used as an early fire detection system and a vital component of primary life support systems. Herein, such a sensor is presented which utilizes non dispersive infrared spectroscopy to detect gases. Design and results from testing on a high altitude baloon flight are presented. The goal of this work is to develop the hardware so that it is a rugged and viable technology for a variety of sensor applications in a variety of environments. It is, therefore, crucial that the hardware can reject heat at low pressures, survive the low-temperature operation, have low drift (stable output), remain low power, and be insensitive to humidity.

Multi-Gas Detection System Based on Non-Dispersive Infrared (NDIR) Spectral Technology

“…To ensure an accurate gas concentration measurement, a multi-channel pyroelectric detector and optical filters were used in this detection system. Based on the HITRAN (high-resolution transmission) molecular absorption database [ 26 ], it was observed that the absorption bands of CO, CO 2 , and C 3 H 8 were located in the range of 3–5 μm, and an overlap between these bands was absent. The main infrared absorption peaks of the above three gases do not overlap.…”