Continuous Determination of Gas Concentrations

In the course of a collaboration project we have developed a mobile, infrastrucutre independent sensor platform which automatically records gas concentrations and climatological data. This allows an exact and timely depiction of climatological conditions even in complex building strucutres over a longer period of time.

The functional principle

Besides gas concentrations the measuring unit records the follwoing climatological variables: temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure as well as wind speed in x, y and z direction. The latter is recorded by connecting an external ultrasonic anemometer. The acquired values are saved onto an internal memory chip in one second intervals and are marked with a highly precise time stamp allowing to directly compare the measured data of different platforms with each other. The computing unit is based on a microcontroller with ARM architecture using as operating system a real-time capable Linux version. In addition to the integrated touch screen for on-line control each platform has a USB and ethernet interface. The implementation of a wireless interface via WLAN, Bluetooth or Zigbee is facultative.

Properties and application areas of the sensor platform

Due to a rechargeable battery with 24 hours capacity our sensor platform can be operated independently from any infrastructure. If necessary the platform, however, can be plugged into an existing in-house grid via a commercial power adaptor. The sensor platform is modular and flexible and, thus, can easily be adapted to changing conditions and requirements. We have already integrated measuring units with up to six different sensors.

Our research & development services

• Customer specific adaptation to the measuring task,
• integration of marketable different types of gas sensors (such as flow, membrane or solid state sensors) into a sensor platform,
• integration of different operation modes (such as optical, chemical, MEMS),
• integration of sensors for climate data (such as pressure, temperature, humidity),
• development and integration of evaluation routines.

Possible application areas

• Climatological acquisition of environmental parameters,
• immission and emission measurements,
• detection of process gases,
  
• process monitoring and process control,
• leakage detection (for instance SF₆ detection at transformer stations, power lines, etc.),
• continuous monitoring and control of sensitive areas,
• detection of environmentally relevant gases such as TVOC, VOC, CO₂.

Funded by: BMBF, Project MausKat, Reference 13N11677.