High accuracy low-cost NDIR sensing

Sammanfattning: Sensing gas concentrations using optical absorption offers valuable advantages over other methods ina wide variety of real-world applications from industrial processes to environmental change. One of the most rapidly developing detection techniques on the global market is the non-dispersive infrared method (NDIR). Sensors developed based on this technique satisfy a growing demand for low-cost, reliable and long-term maintenance-free solutions. The technologies available to support this field for sensor key components such as light sources, photo detectors, optic cavities, and electronic components, have advanced rapidly in recent years. This development has led to an increasing number of application fields, due to significant improvements in accuracy, sensitivity and resolution.However, this technique has limitations related to basic physical principles and sensor design performance. Variation in sensing environments’ temperature and pressure, the impact of water vapour presence and sensor component ageing are the most important interfering factors for investigation. Errors in measured values could be caused by any of these factors because they influence various sensor parts and the environment’s physical properties. The correct interpretation of error sources is one the most difficult and important tasks involved in designing stable, high-precision sensors.To facilitate investigations into measurement performance limitations, test equipment was developed along with test approaches capable of creating experimental conditions that exceed the tested sensor’ stolerances. The studied resolution limit for long-path sensors is about 100 ppb. For measurements in fresh air concentrations (approximately 400 ppm of CO2), this is equivalent to a precision of less than0.1%. The methods used to reduce possible inaccuracies due to various error sources’ impacts should possess compensatory capabilities and precisions that exceed this value.To improve the pressure compensation procedure’s performance, a complete advanced system that includes everything from a lab test bench to the supporting software and comprehensive calculation algorithm was developed. The test bench creates pressure conditions that deviate from the reference value by less than 0.2 mbar (or 0.02% of the standard pressure, 1013 mbar).One of this study’s major findings is the concentration range-independent pressure compensation method. The advanced conditions achieved with the test station also facilitated the discovery and characterisation of the sources of long-term drift in methane concentration measurement.