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Portable 4.6 Micrometers Laser Absorption Spectrometer for Carbon Monoxide Monitoring and Fire DetectionThe air quality aboard manned spacecraft must be continuously monitored to ensure crew safety and identify equipment malfunctions. In particular, accurate real-time monitoring of carbon monoxide (CO) levels helps to prevent chronic exposure and can also provide early detection of combustion-related hazards. For long-duration missions, environmental monitoring grows in importance, but the mass and volume of monitoring instruments must be minimized. Furthermore, environmental analysis beyond low-Earth orbit must be performed in-situ, as sample return becomes impractical. Due to their small size, low power draw, and performance reliability, semiconductor-laser-based absorption spectrometers are viable candidates for this purpose. To reduce instrument form factor and complexity, the emission wavelength of the laser source should coincide with strong fundamental absorption lines of the target gases, which occur in the 3 to 5 micrometers wavelength range for most combustion products of interest, thereby reducing the absorption path length required for low-level concentration measurements. To address the needs of current and future NASA missions, we have developed a prototype absorption spectrometer using a semiconductor quantum cascade laser source operating near 4.6 micrometers that can be used to detect low concentrations of CO with a compact single-pass absorption cell. In this study, we present the design of the prototype instrument and report on measurements of CO emissions from the combustion of a variety of aerospace plastics.
Document ID
20150008051
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Briggs, Ryan M.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Frez, Clifford
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Forouhar, Siamak
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
May, Randy D.
(Port City Instruments, LLC Wilmington, NC, United States)
Ruff, Gary A.
(NASA Glenn Research Center Cleveland, OH, United States)
Date Acquired
May 13, 2015
Publication Date
July 14, 2013
Subject Category
Instrumentation And Photography
Environment Pollution
Meeting Information
Meeting: International Conference on Environmental Systems
Location: Vail, CO
Country: United States
Start Date: July 14, 2013
End Date: July 18, 2013
Sponsors: American Inst. of Chemical Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
Tunable Environmental Laser Spectrometer (TELS)
fire detection platforms
environmental monitoring systems

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