Highly sensitive and selective CO sensor using a 2.33 μm diode laser and wavelength modulation spectroscopy.

A ppm-level CO sensor based on a 2f wavelength modulation spectroscopy (2f-WMS) technique was developed for the application of SF6 decomposition analysis in an electric power system. A detailed investigation of the optimum target line selection was carried out to avoid spectral interference from high purity SF6 in a wide wavelength range. A diode laser emitting at 2.33 μm and a 14.5-m multipass gas cell (MGC) was employed to target the R(6) line of the CO first overtone band and increase the optical path, respectively, thus resulting in a minimum detection sensitivity of 1 ppm. A Levenberg-Marquardt nonlinear least-squares fit algorithm makes full use of the information from all data points of the 2f spectrum and as a result, a measurement precision of ~40 ppb was achieved with a data update rate of 0.6 s. The sensor performance was also evaluated in terms of the gas flow rate, stability, and linearity. The results showed that the best operating condition with a precision of 6 ppb can be achieved by increasing the gas flow rate to the value that matches the optimum averaging time of 48 s.