Research on optical fiber methane gas sensor of spectral absorption type

Yan Xiaomei
Taiyuan University of Science
and Technology
College of Electronics and
Information Engineering
TaiYuan China
yanxm7980@126.com
Zhang Jilong
North University of China
Institute of Optical Information
Technology
TaiYuan China
zhangjl@nuc.edu.cn
Wang Zhishe
Taiyuan University of Science and
Technology
College of Applied Science
TaiYuan China
wzs2003@163.com
AbstractBased on the methane spectral absorption
characteristic and difference absorption technology, a method
of detecting methane concentration is presented. Taking
distributed feedback (DFB) laser as the light source, the light
with central wavelength 1650 nm is be divided into two-way by
beam splitter ,and one beam passes the methane gas in a gas
cell, the other directly passes another reference gas cell. The
useful light signal is converted in to electric signal by hardware
circuit. The relation ship between concentration and voltage is
obtained by virtual instrument software processing the voltage
signal, and the experimental result accord with the actual
methane concentration. At last, the factors influencing on the
experimental detecting resolution are analyzed. The results of
the experiments show that the real time detection and monitor
of the methane gas can be completed in this system.
Keywords-component; Optical fiber sensor; Gas sensor;
Difference absorption; Methane;
.Introduction
Methane is the principal constituent of gas
approximately 83%~89% in the coal mine
[1]
. The gas is the
important root of coal mine natural disaster. The certain
density of gas can be able to cause the suffocation of human
and explode when met the fire hazard. The gas explosion is
extremely easy to cause coal dust explosion. The
prominence of the coal and the gas are also a kind of intense
power phenomenon and serious natural disaster. The gas
accident has accounted for over 70% of the total national
coal mine heavy accident. The gas explosion not only
causes the huge economic losses for the country and the
people, but also captures many miners' lives. The country
has put the safety production of coal mine as top priority
and has given the high attention.
At present the domestic examination instruments of
methane in coal mine are: Gas phase chromatograph, gas
sensor, optics interferometer and so on
[1]
. And, the gas
phase chromatograph may examine CO, C02 and many
other kinds of gas. The measuring range is wide and the
precision is greatly high. But the shortcomings are: high
cost, big volume, high request of working conditions and no
real-time survey. The main application is in laboratory; Gas
sensor is easy to operate and cheap. It is the most common
methane examination method in mine pit at present. The
shortcomings are: limited measuring range, low precision,
unreliable result and very long response time; Optics
interferometer has no high request of use condition and
precision can achieve about 0.1.Such kind of instrument is
generally used by safety officer in the mine pit. While when
the steam content is high, the measuring accuracy drops,
instrument's installment is difficult, the reading is not
convenient, the measuring range is limited and the precision
is not high. All of these are the shortcomings.
Therefore it is necessary to develop one kind of new
instrumentation to overcome all kinds of problems that
existing in present equipment and solve the gas explosion
prevention warning problem. The paper studies the system
that is based on the spectral absorption principle, using the
optical fiber methane gas sensor. It uses the difference
absorption examination technology of single wave long
double path of rays to monitor the methane density.
].The principle of examining gas density using infrared
spectrum absorption law
The infrared spectrum absorption law uses double
atomic member that have the specific absorption peak to the
infrared light to realize the characteristic. That is to say,
some kind of gas only correspondingly absorbs infrared
luminous energy in some kind of wave band place, while
this wave band is called the specific infrared absorption
peak of the gas. The absorption energy is related with gas
density in infrared light area
[2]
. Therefore, people may
design some kind of equipment to examine the gas density.
When the light wavelength range covers one or more
gas absorption line, the light will have the attenuation
through the gas. A bunch of survey light intensity
is
0( )
I

through testing gas, after molecular absorption by
testing gas, the transmission luminous intensity is
( )
I

.
According to the Lambert-Beer law,

( ) 0( )
exp( ) I I

CL o =
(1)
L is the optical path that light passes through the testing
gas, C is the volume concentration of testing gas ,

o is the
2010 International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks
978-0-7695-4202-7/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CASoN.2010.17
41
absorption coefficient of gas in the wave length as .
When incident luminous intensity and the projection
luminous intensity is fixed, the gas strength can be obtained.
].The principle of difference absorption examination
technology
From formula (1), by surveying the output luminous
intensity of air chamber, we may determine the testing gas
strength. In the practical application, the absorption spectral
width of gas in infrared wave band is only several
nanometers, only accounts for few parts of the survey
source luminous intensity. The gas absorption signal
submerges in the noise. It is very difficult to survey gas
density using the spectral absorption, particularly low
concentration gas examination. At the same time, the source
power's fluctuation, the environments disturbance to the air
chamber rays path, the light survey component's noise, drift
and temperature drift during the circuit, can lower system's
sensitivity from different degree
[3]
. Therefore, if people
want to examine the methane gas strength precisely, they
must take the corresponding measures. Difference
absorption technology is used widespread in gas
examination.
From the Beer theorem, the light absorption coefficient,
the material density, satisfies the following relations
through absorbing medium's length and the transmission
luminous intensity:
( )
0
exp I I cl l

o | o = + + + (

2
formula (2): I .
0
I respectively is the transmission and
the incident luminous intensity;

o is medium absorption
coefficient of unit density unit length under certain wave
length; | is the Rayleigh scattering coefficient; is Mie
scattering coefficient; o is Absorption coefficient caused by
gas density fluctuation; L is the interaction length of
testing gas and the light; C is the testing gas density. When
examine gas with optical fiber sensing system, the formula
(2) should also contain a scale-up factor, then has:
( )
0
exp I KI CL L

o | o = + + + (

3
And expressions of luminous intensity through air
chamber and reference air chamber respectively are:
( )
1 1 0 1 1 1
exp I K I CL L

o | o = + + + (

4
( )
2 2 0 2 2 2
exp I K I L | o + + = (

5
Comparing the (4) type with (5) type:
1 0 1
2 2 2 1 1 1
2 2 0
exp( )
K I I
L CL
I K I

| o o | o = + + 6
Adjusting optical system to make
besides, because two air chambers are nearly the same,
therefore we approximate
0 2 0 1
I K I K =
2 1
| | = ,
2 1
=
2 1
, o o = ,
Formula (6) might write:
( o = )
1
exp
I
CL
I

2
7
namely
1
2
1
I
C Ln
I
L

o
| |
=
|
\ .
8
We may see from the formula 8 , under the
condition of air chamber length L and absorption coefficient

o are fixed, so long as extracts the luminous intensity can

we be able to obtain gas strength C.
|.The realization of absorb difference optical fiber
sensor system
^.System strcture
Figure 1. Structure drawing for absorb and test the Methane gas concentration
The principle frame of absorb and test the Methane gas
concentration is showed as upper one, which adopts DFB
LD as light source, and draw on single light source and
double optical to realize the testing system for Methane gas
concentration, optical fiber can transfer the light generated
by laser to a far distance, so you can fix the light source
disposal unit inside mine during devising, which prevent the
danger due to the explosion incurred by electrical elements,
it specially suits to the gas online remote test in the harsh
environment
[4,5]
. This system consists of light source,
optical isolator, beam breaker, air room, light to electrical
transformer, front enlarge current and filter current. Among
I
I
0
I
0
I
1
Electro-optical
switch
Data
collection
Electro-optical
switch
Reference
gas chamber
Light source Light
isolator
Beam
splitter
DFB
Gas to be
test chamber
Temperature
control
Disposal
Low-pass
filter
Low-pass
filter
Front
enlarge
Front
enlarge
Drive
current
I
2
42
which optical isolator is to prevent the light reflect affect
light source in the air room, the front enlarge current is to
enlarge and dispose the weak electrical sign gained by light
to electrical transformer, the low pass filter is to eliminate
the alternative current float and PIN dark current of
background light and also filter the interference of the high
frequency noise of sign and power supply frequency sign.
During working, firstly the system will put the light of
distributed and reflected wave length 1650nm distribute the
optical into two same strong light I
0
through optical isolator
and optical distributor, one is through reference air room,
the other through to be test air room, finally transfer the out
put these two current I
1
and I
2
to the according current sign,
to compare conveniently, finally transfer these two currents
sign into voltage sign U
1
and U
2
through front enlarge
current and low pass current , separately:

1 1
I m R U = (9)

2 2
I m R U = (10)
M is the unit response degree, when wave length is
1650nm,m=0.8-0.85A/mW,R is sample electric resistance,
put formula9and formula10into formula8get
the result:

1
2
1
( )
U
C Ln
L U

o
= (11)
The formula11 shows if

o and L can be defined

in advance, so we can get the Methane gas concentration
only got the result of
2
1
U
U
b.the define of the absorb coefficient

o and the length

of air room
under a big air pressure, Methane gas is set on the
certain wave length , the calculate formula of absorption
coefficient is
[6]

0
2
0
N S
( )
( 1
o v
t
=
A + )
cm
(12)
In the formula 12 is a standard big air pressure,
the the normal temperature is Number of molecules when
normal temperature is 25,
0
N
19 3
0
2.5 10 N mol

~ ,
S is the absorb strength degree (cm/molecule) from
drawing 2 air Infrared absorption HITRAN, we know that
different number of wave accord with different HITRAN,
that is when
0
1651nm =
m
21
1.28
, number of wave is
, ,
1
0
6056.9 v c

=
1
m mol

0
10 = S c is absorption
line half width
[7]
, ,
1
0
. 0

= 05cm 0 0 ( )/ v v A= ( ) , o v is
the Infrared absorption in the point of v
If 0 v v = , put into formula12, we get the result:

1 0
0
0
( ) 0.219
N S
v o
t

= = cm (13)
The Figure 2 shows that the Methane gas absorbs good
when length is 1653.7nm, but we choose the DFB laser of
wave mid-length 1650nm in the lab, so we finally choose
the absorption peak 1651nm of Methane gas.
Figure 2. The spectrum of methane gas absorbing
at the wavelength 1650nm
Besides for the choice of length of air room, firstly we
consider 1 cl o << , then when the longer the air room, the
more sensitive degree , but if the air room is too long which
can lead to the experiment device structure too big, so
comprehensively analysis get the length of air room
L=20cm.
.the experiment result
^.Experiment result
Using nitrogen(purity is 99.99%) to wash air absorption
room, measuring the voltage valve of end output sign when
through reference air room and to be test air room , then in
the to be test air room, each time input 0.2mL Methane
gas(purity is 99.95%) the volume of air absorption is
112mL, calculate the air concentration after each time input
0.2mL, when air mix together, draw out of syringe,
meanwhile draw out 0.2mL air, to maintain the whole
experiment process is finished under the same pressure(a
big air pressure), each time increase air is the same, totally
measuring 10 experimental data of 10nb concentration
valve.
Due to the max valve of ( ) 0.1 CL o v s ( ) o v is
0
0.219/ cm o = , under the experiment optical distance
20 L cm = , you can calculate
0.1
2.2831% s =
0.204/ 20
C
cm cm
,
so in the whole experiment, air concentration is controlled
below 2.2831%.
43
Table 1 experiment data
Standard
concentration
(%)
U1
compare
with U2
Calculate
concentration
(%)
Error
(%)
0.0000 0.0642 -0.1211 0.1211
0.1783 0.0800 0.1352 0.0431
0.3562 0.6730 0.3920 0.0358
0.5338 1.8312 0.6466 0.1128
0.7111 2.8943 0.8129 0.1018
0.8881 3.7687 0.9276 0.0423
1.0648 5.1476 1.0841 0.0395
1.2411 6.8481 1.2504 0.0093
1.4172 8.1477 1.3639 0.0533
1.5929 10.3646 1.5383 0.0546
1.7683 13.4674 1.7535 0.0148
As the data of Table 1, calculate the error, as the
diagram shows, the max measuring error is 0.12% when the
concentration of Methane gas is zero.
b.The result analysis
According to the analysis, it can be seen that there are
three main factors closely attached to the measurement of
the resolution of the system, that is, the deviation of the
laser wave length to the absorption peak, the inaccuracy of
the ratio of the gas density and the contacted etalon of the
gain in the air chambers.
The gas absorption factor abstained by the experiment
statistics is lower than the calculated value in theory.
Because it is difficult to make the laser wave length stay at
the center of the absorption peak, the deflection is
inevitable. Due to the narrow absorption line width of the
methane, it is necessary to adjust the temperature and the
drive current of the laser instrument carefully to make
leaser wave length stay at a nearer place to the gas
absorption peak. The absorption factor deviating from the
center of the absorption peak is lower than that of the center,
therefore, it may lower the sensitivity of measurement of
the system.
Because the volume of the gas absorption chamber in
the experiment is 112mL, relatively small, the gas which is
inflated in the chamber every time is very thin so as to
measure the methane of low density. It is difficult to inflate
the gas into the chamber using an injector, every time only
0.2mL, so there will be too much deviation. If the chamber
of big volume or the standard gas is used, the deviation
caused by the small volume methane injection controlled by
hand can be overcome and more accurate measurement
result can be reached.
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