Search

In this letter, a portable trace carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement instrument based on photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) was proposed and designed. The nonresonance PA cell (PAC) including a cooper tube with 251.2 μl was designed. Two condenser microphones were used to measure the PA signal simultaneously. The center wavelength of the distributed feedback laser was chosen to 2004 nm. Within 1 s integral time, the detection limit for CO2 reached 12.7 ppm. The normalized noise‐equivalent absorption coefficient was calculated to be 4.8468 × 10−9 cm−1W/Hz1/2. With Allan‐Werle deviation analysis, the measurement detection limit for CO2 improved to 4 ppm with 30 s integration time. As a result, the trace CO2 instrument based on PAS shows a good performance in long‐term detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We design a photoacoustic (PA) SO 2 sensor based on the coupling of a differential photoacoustic cell (DPAC) and cost-effective UV-LED, which realized the dynamic monitoring of SO 2 gas at the ppb level. Aiming at the limitation of UV-LED divergence, a light source combination module with high condensing efficiency was devised based on a lens through theoretical derivation and experimental analysis. The PA signal with the optimum matching of the lens was 20-times larger than the direct coupling of the UV-LED. Due to the excellent beam collimation effect of the lens assembly, the background interference was only 1 ppm. In addition, the DPAC gathered the merits of doubling the PA signal and reducing the flow noise interference. The analysis of Allan-Werle deviation showed that the detection limit of SO 2 was 1.3 ppb with the averaging time of 100 s.

We designed and implemented a photoacoustic (PA) sensor for H 2 S detection in SF 6 background gas based on a multi-pass differential photoacoustic cell (MDPC) and a near-infrared distributed feedback (DFB) laser. In the MDPC apparatus, two resonators with identical geometric parameters were vertically and symmetrically embedded. The differential processing algorithm of two phase-reversed signals realized the effective enhancement of the PA signal and suppressed the flow noise in the dynamic sampling process. In addition, the λ/4 buffer chamber in the MDPC was utilized as a muffler to further reduce the flow noise and realize the dynamic detection of H 2 S. The collimated excitation light was reflected 30 times in a multi-pass structure constituted of two gold-plated concave mirrors, and an absorption path length of 4.92 m was achieved. Due to the high gas density of SF 6 , the relationship between the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the gas flow was different between SF 6 and N 2 background gases. The maximum flow rate of the characteristic gas components detected in the SF 6 background is 150 standard cubic centimeters per minute (SCCM), which is lower than 350 SCCM in N 2 . The linearity property was analyzed, and the results show that the sensitivity of the sensor to H 2 S in the SF 6 background was 27.3 μV/ppm. With the structure, parameters, temperature, gas flow, and natural frequency of the MDPC been optimized, a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 11 ppb was reached with an averaging time of 1000 s, which furnished an effective preventive implement for the safe operation of gas insulation equipment.

Generally, a microemulsion consists of oil, water, surfactant, and sometimes cosurfactant. Herein, we report a surfactant-free microemulsion (denoted as SFME), consisting of oleic acid (oil phase), water, and n-propanol without the amphiphilic molecular structure of a traditional surfactant. The phase behavior of the ternary system was investigated, showing that there were a single-phase microemulsion region and a multiphase region in the ternary phase diagram. The electrical conductivity measurement was employed to investigate the microregions of the single-phase microemulsion region, and three different microregions, that is, water-in-oleic acid (W/O), a bicontinuous (B.C.) region, and oleic acid-in-water (O/W), were identified, which were further confirmed by freeze-fracture and cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (FF-TEM and Cryo-TEM) observations. The polarity and the salt solubility of water domains in the W/O SFME were investigated by UV-visible spectroscopy using methyl orange and potassium ferricyanide as probes, respectively. Experimental results showed that the water domains in the W/O microemulsion had a lower polarity than bulk water and a normal solubility for salt species, indicating that the SFMEs have much significance in the preparation of various nanomaterials.