Highly sensitive and reliable optical fiber TDLAS gas detection system for methane in situ monitoring in near space.

A highly sensitive and reliable tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy gas detection system with a temperature-pressure compensation algorithm is demonstrated for detecting C H 4 concentrations in near space. Near space generally refers to the airspace 20-100 km away from the ground, where temperature and pressure changes are complex. Since the gas absorption spectrum is easily affected by temperature and pressure, a temperature-pressure compensation algorithm is proposed and used in the C H 4 sensor to improve the detection accuracy of the sensor. First, we measured the basic characteristics of the sensor in the laboratory, such as linearity and long-term stability. Experimental results showed that the linear correlation coefficient R-square can reach 0.999, and the concentration fluctuation of C H 4 is less than 0.17 ppm within 3.5 h. Then the sensor was applied to a research activity in Qinghai Province, China, in September, and the results show that the sensor can effectively monitor the C H 4 concentration in near space.

Feature Domain Transform Filter for the Removal of Inherent Noise Bound to the Absorption Signal.

We propose to replace the traditional time-frequency domain filtering with feature domain filtering to realize an innovation of filtering algorithm. A feature domain transform filter (FDTF) is composed of the feature domain transform layer based on principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm, the feature domain information extractor based on deep learning and the time domain transform layer. It is established to filter out the noise with the same frequency and phase as the signal and is verified on methane gas. Although FDTF is established based on the simulated data set, the filtering effects of the simulation test set and the experimental data set show that the proposed FDTF outperforms other widely used time-frequency filtering algorithms. The FDTF-assisted methane sensor has good linearity at different concentrations of methane gas. With the FDTF enhancement, the optimized methane sensor performs excellent precision and stability in real-time measurements and achieves the minimum detectable column density of 2.50 ppm·m. This is undoubtedly a successful attempt to move the signal to a new domain for parsing and separation.

Dual-logarithmic demodulation method application in a wide gas optical thickness range.

Direct absorption spectroscopy (DAS) is an extremely practical and effective technology to detect gas concentration in site applications. Dual-beam subtraction is one of the most common demodulation methods in DAS, yet this method cannot solve the problem of absolute absorption curve nonlinearization in a wide optical thickness range. A real-time and practical dual-logarithmic demodulation method is proposed and proved to be robust when the optical thickness is much greater than linear region. Moreover, the error of optical thickness peak is only 1.18% between the dual-logarithmic demodulation system and simulation after correcting the dual-beam subtraction demodulation system under a 300 K, 1 atm, and 3 m absorption path. When the range of optical thickness peak of acetylene is from 0.0252 to 2.5335 at 1532.83 nm, the peak voltages always maintain satisfactory linearity (R-square=0.9989).

Dual-beam antiphase method to improve the WMS measurement limit in long-distance methane detection.

Wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) with second harmonic detection is an extremely effective technique to detect gases in site applications. However, the significant levels of nonlinear effects in a system give rise to high background signals that either limit detection sensitivity or distort the harmonic signals. This paper outlines the theory of WMS-involved background signals and focuses on the elimination of undesirable effects in the background. A real-time, long-distance methane sensor using a tunable diode laser near 1653.7 nm is developed to continuously monitor methane by using a variable optical attenuator to suppress the background. Trace methane detection experiments verify that the minimum detection limit of the system can be increased by 47.5 times compared to the traditional WMS method.

Two-component gas quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy sensor based on time-division multiplexing of distributed-feedback laser driver current.

A two-component gas sensor in quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy based on time-division multiplexing (TDM) technology of a distributed-feedback (DFB) laser driver current was proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The quartz tuning-fork-based photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) cell configuration with two optical collimators and two acoustic microresonators was designed to detect the second-harmonic (${2}f$2f) PAS signal. The two optical collimators guaranteed that the two laser beams would inject the PAS cell conveniently, providing higher power input than a 3 dB optical fiber coupler. Two-component gas sensing was achieved by the TDM of the DFB laser driver current. We used this two-component gas sensing technique to detect acetylene (${{\rm C}_2}{{\rm H}_2}$C2H2) at 1532.83 nm and methane (${{\rm CH}_4}$CH4) at 1653.722 nm. The ${{\rm C}_2}{{\rm H}_2}$C2H2 and ${{\rm CH}_4}$CH4 detection was achieved at a 2.4 s interval. The minimum detection limits of 1 ppmv for ${{\rm C}_2}{{\rm H}_2}$C2H2 and 13.14 ppmv for ${{\rm CH}_4}$CH4 were obtained, and the linear responses reached were 0.99968 and 0.99652 for ${{\rm C}_2}{{\rm H}_2}$C2H2 and ${{\rm CH}_4}$CH4, respectively. Moreover, the continuous monitoring of ${{\rm CH}_4}$CH4 and ${{\rm C}_2}{{\rm H}_2}$C2H2 for 40 min showed a good stability. The TDM technology of the DFB laser driver current would play an important role on the multi-component detection.

Dual Path Lock-In System for Elimination of Residual Amplitude Modulation and SNR Enhancement in Photoacoustic Spectroscopy.

A technique for elimination of residual amplitude modulation (ERAM) in photoacoustic spectroscopy based on dual path lock-in was proposed and experimentally demonstrated. There are two lock-in amplifiers, one is for gas concentration demodulation and another for residual amplitude modulation (RAM) measurement by tuning the reference signal in different phases, and then a dual path lock-in technique based on subtraction is applied to RAM removal, improving the second harmonic profile significantly. In this system, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) increases about two times based on our dual path lock-in technique compared to one distributed feedback laser diode (DFB-LD). The system achieved a good linear response (R-square = 0.99887) in a concentration range from 100 ppmv to 2400 ppmv and a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 1.47 ppmv.

Acousto-Optic Q-Switched Fiber Laser-Based Intra-Cavity Photoacoustic Spectroscopy for Trace Gas Detection.

We proposed a new method for gas detection in photoacoustic spectroscopy based on acousto-optic Q-switched fiber laser by merging a transmission PAS cell (resonant frequency f0 = 5.3 kHz) inside the fiber laser cavity. The Q-switching was achieved by an acousto-optic modulator, achieving a peak pulse power of ~679 mW in the case of the acousto-optic modulation signal with an optimized duty ratio of 10%. We used a custom-made fiber Bragg grating with a central wavelength of 1530.37 nm (the absorption peak of C2H2) to select the laser wavelength. The system achieved a linear response (R² = 0.9941) in a concentration range from 400 to 7000 ppmv, and the minimum detection limit compared to that of a conventional intensity modulation system was enhanced by 94.2 times.

Suppression of cross-interference in the absorption spectra of gas mixtures.

In the quantitative analysis of mixed gases by tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy, the overlapping of absorption spectra and mutual interference of multi-component gases can lead to problems of large measurement errors and low analysis accuracy. In this paper, an improved firefly algorithm is proposed and applied to the support vector machine regression model to solve this problem. The specific method includes introducing an adaptive step size to balance the local and global searches and using the gradient descent method to accelerate the parameter optimization process so as to improve the model's generalization ability and prediction accuracy. The experimental results show that the maximum errors of the improved algorithm in the prediction of CH4 and CO gas concentrations are no more than 0.0443 % and 2 ppm, with coefficients of determination, R2, of 0.9994 and 0.99815. The promising results obtained by the system provide theoretical support for the realization of high-precision detection of multicomponent gases with a single source of light, and also demonstrate the high efficiency and feasibility of the method in practical detection.

CH4/C2H6 dual gas sensing system using a single mid-infrared laser.

Methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) dual gas sensor with low system complexity and strong stability is proposed. The correction method based on absorbance spectrum is applied, and the cross-interference of C2H6 to CH4 is eliminated. In the single gas concentration measurement, linear fitting is performed between the absorbance and concentration of CH4 and C2H6, and the correlation coefficients of R2 = 0.99959 and R2 = 0.99994 are obtained respectively, which proves that the accuracy of the dual gas sensor is robust. In the dual gas concentration measurement, we carry out continuous measurement of five mixed gases and a long-term measurement of a mixture of gases, which verifies that our sensor has the fast response speed and strong stability. The minimum detectable column densities of 0.62 ppm·m for CH4 and 0.1 ppm·m for C2H6 are achieved, respectively. The CH4/C2H6 dual gas sensor assisted by the correction method has high sensitivity and strong robustness to cross-interference, and has great potential for application in various scenarios.

Recovery integral absorbance method in the full concentration range to eliminate the interference of background gas.

At present, gas sensors are extremely susceptible to interference from background gases in the field environment, which leads to greatly reduced accuracy. For this reason, we propose an improved method of recovering integral absorbance (IA) using Y component of first harmonic to achieve accurate prediction of the full range of concentration (not reaching absorption saturation). This approach can eliminate the interference of background gas at a low modulation depth (m < 0.25). When the background gas is pure nitrogen and a mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the recovery effect of this method on methane is both close to the theoretical value when the background gas is air. The linear fitting coefficients for the methane concentration range of 2000-7000 ppm are all greater than 0.999. The prediction effect is satisfactory regardless of the background gas, with a relative error of less than 1%. In summary, this method has considerable application prospects.