Effects of Temperature and Humidity on NDIR CO2 Gas Sensor

This article describes the characteristics of nondispersive infrared carbon dioxide gas sensor according to the temperatures and humidifies. In this researches, a thermopile sensor that included application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) was used and the White-cell structure was implemented as an optical waveguide. The developed sensor modules were installed in gas chamber and then the temperature of gas chamber has been increased from 283 K to 313 K with 10K temperature step. In order to analyze the effects of humidity levels, the relative humidity levels were changed from 30 to 80%R.H. with small humidifier. Then, the characteristics of sensor modules were acquired with the increment of carbon dioxide concentrations from 0 to 2,000 ppm. When the initial voltages of sensors were compared before and after humidifying the chamber at constant temperature, the decrements of the output voltages of sensors are like these: 9mV (reference infrared sensor), 41 mV (carbon dioxide sensor), 2 mV (temperature sensor). With the increment of ambient temperature, the averaged output voltage of carbon dioxide sensor was increased 19 mV, however, when the humidity level was increased, it was decreased 14mV. Based upon the experimental results, the humidity effect could be alleviated by the increment of temperature, so the effects of humidity and temperature could be only compensated by the ambient temperature itself. The estimated carbon dioxide concentrations showed 10% large errors below 200 ppm, however, the errors of the estimations of carbon dioxide concentrations were less than ${\pm}5%$ from 400 to 2,000 ppm.

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