Non-dispersive infrared nitrous oxide detector
- Carnegie Mellon Research Inst., Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
Governmental guidelines are being established for monitoring the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide (N{sub 2}O) in hospitals, dentistry and veterinary practice to guard against deleterious effects on personnel in the workplace. Yet traditional equipment for monitoring N{sub 2}O was too expensive for continuous monitoring at low concentrations. Thus, there has been a pressing need to develop low-cost high-sensitivity instruments that could be used to continuously monitor nitrous oxide in the relevant working environments. A nitrous oxide detector has been developed which is capable of detecting concentrations as low as a few ppm nitrous oxide in the presence of large changing backgrounds of 0-1,500 ppm carbon dioxide and water vapor in the range of 30-70% RH at normal room temperatures. The detector utilizes three channels to measure the IR absorption due to the N{sub 2}O relative to the CO{sub 2} background and a reference channel. The prototype devices have an LCD readout for continuous display of the readings. Additional features include an analog output for remote data acquisition and audiovisual alerts for two threshold levels. Data will be presented to show the sensitivity and performance of the detector and discuss some of the issues related to bringing it from research to its current state as a pre-production prototype.
- OSTI ID:
- 441275
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-960782-; TRN: 96:006557-0046
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 6. international meeting on chemical sensors, Gaithersburg, MD (United States), 22-25 Jul 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of The 6th international meeting on chemical sensors; PB: 313 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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