A Portable ppb-Level Formaldehyde Sensor for Real-Time Air Quality Monitoring

Kun Duan; Junjun Wu; Tobias Grabe; Roland Lachmayer; Wei Ren

doi:10.1109/TIM.2023.3338688

A Portable ppb-Level Formaldehyde Sensor for Real-Time Air Quality Monitoring

Kun Duan
, Junjun Wu^*
, Tobias Grabe
, Roland Lachmayer
, Wei Ren^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Institute of Motion Engineering and Mechanism Design

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review

Abstract

— We report the development of a battery-driven, portable, and ultrasensitive optical gas sensor for parts per billion (ppb)-level formaldehyde (H₂CO) diagnostics. The sensor consists of an interband cascade laser exploiting the intense H₂CO absorption line at 3.6 µm, an open-path multipass gas cell with 26.4-m pathlength, and homemade electronics for signal processing, data acquisition, and results display. Besides the advantage of being interference-free from other atmospheric constituents, the Allan deviation analysis reveals a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 1.42 ppb at a time resolution of 0.2 s. This limit can be enhanced to 43 parts per trillion (ppt) with an average time of 230 s. Ultimately, we successfully showcased the practical use of the portable sensor for detecting indoor H₂CO.

Original language	English
Article number	7001307
Pages (from-to)	1-7
Number of pages	7
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
Volume	73
E-pub ahead of print	1 Dec 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2023.3338688
Publication status	Published - Jan 2024

Keywords

Formaldehyde (HCO)
indoor air quality
optical gas sensor

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Instrumentation
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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10.1109/TIM.2023.3338688

Cite this

@article{6bbf378625a34b0196f5b240f3ca0e56,

title = "A Portable ppb-Level Formaldehyde Sensor for Real-Time Air Quality Monitoring",

abstract = "— We report the development of a battery-driven, portable, and ultrasensitive optical gas sensor for parts per billion (ppb)-level formaldehyde (H2CO) diagnostics. The sensor consists of an interband cascade laser exploiting the intense H2CO absorption line at 3.6 µm, an open-path multipass gas cell with 26.4-m pathlength, and homemade electronics for signal processing, data acquisition, and results display. Besides the advantage of being interference-free from other atmospheric constituents, the Allan deviation analysis reveals a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 1.42 ppb at a time resolution of 0.2 s. This limit can be enhanced to 43 parts per trillion (ppt) with an average time of 230 s. Ultimately, we successfully showcased the practical use of the portable sensor for detecting indoor H2CO.",

keywords = "Formaldehyde (HCO), indoor air quality, optical gas sensor",

author = "Kun Duan and Junjun Wu and Tobias Grabe and Roland Lachmayer and Wei Ren",

note = "Funding Information: This work was supported in part by the General Research Fund under Grant 14208221; in part by the Collaborative Research Fund under Grant C4002-22Y; in part by the Innovation and Technology Fund, Hong Kong SAR, China, under Grant GHP/129/20SZ; and in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen, China, under Grant JCYJ20200109143008165. ",

year = "2024",

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doi = "10.1109/TIM.2023.3338688",

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AU - Duan, Kun

AU - Wu, Junjun

AU - Grabe, Tobias

AU - Lachmayer, Roland

AU - Ren, Wei

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported in part by the General Research Fund under Grant 14208221; in part by the Collaborative Research Fund under Grant C4002-22Y; in part by the Innovation and Technology Fund, Hong Kong SAR, China, under Grant GHP/129/20SZ; and in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen, China, under Grant JCYJ20200109143008165.

PY - 2024/1

Y1 - 2024/1

N2 - — We report the development of a battery-driven, portable, and ultrasensitive optical gas sensor for parts per billion (ppb)-level formaldehyde (H2CO) diagnostics. The sensor consists of an interband cascade laser exploiting the intense H2CO absorption line at 3.6 µm, an open-path multipass gas cell with 26.4-m pathlength, and homemade electronics for signal processing, data acquisition, and results display. Besides the advantage of being interference-free from other atmospheric constituents, the Allan deviation analysis reveals a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 1.42 ppb at a time resolution of 0.2 s. This limit can be enhanced to 43 parts per trillion (ppt) with an average time of 230 s. Ultimately, we successfully showcased the practical use of the portable sensor for detecting indoor H2CO.

AB - — We report the development of a battery-driven, portable, and ultrasensitive optical gas sensor for parts per billion (ppb)-level formaldehyde (H2CO) diagnostics. The sensor consists of an interband cascade laser exploiting the intense H2CO absorption line at 3.6 µm, an open-path multipass gas cell with 26.4-m pathlength, and homemade electronics for signal processing, data acquisition, and results display. Besides the advantage of being interference-free from other atmospheric constituents, the Allan deviation analysis reveals a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 1.42 ppb at a time resolution of 0.2 s. This limit can be enhanced to 43 parts per trillion (ppt) with an average time of 230 s. Ultimately, we successfully showcased the practical use of the portable sensor for detecting indoor H2CO.

KW - Formaldehyde (HCO)

KW - indoor air quality

KW - optical gas sensor

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85181165740

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DO - 10.1109/TIM.2023.3338688

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JF - IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

M1 - 7001307

ER -

A Portable ppb-Level Formaldehyde Sensor for Real-Time Air Quality Monitoring

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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