Intellectual Thermoconductometric Unit Based on Aerosol Printed Ceramic MEMS Sensor for the Measurement of Natural Gas Composition

The online control of natural gas quality is important for customers, because for them the important value is calorific value of consumed gas, but not its volume. The application of thermoconductometric sensor gives simple possibility to fabricate imbedded intellectual plug-and-play device for this control. The ceramic MEMS sensor based on a combination of this ceramic LTCC membrane and aerosol jet printed platinum microheater was used as a sensing element of this unit. The electronic unit controlling the sensor was designed to stabilize the temperature of the microheater and to measure power necessary to maintain this temperature at different concentrations of N2and CO2 in natural gas. The application of this unit enables the measurement of admixtures of nitrogen and CO2 with detection limit of about 1 vol. % sufficient for the application in gas meter instruments.