Development and field deployment of a mid-infrared CO and CO2 dual-gas sensor system for early fire detection and location

In order to realize early fire detection and location, a mid-infrared carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) dual-gas sensor system was developed, which mainly includes a gas pretreatment module, a CO2 sensor module, a CO sensor module, and a laptop monitoring platform. CO2 and CO absorption lines located at 4.26 μm and 4.66 μm, respectively, were selected to ensure good selectivity of the sensor system. A series of experiments were carried out to evaluate the sensor performance. The 10-90% response time of the CO and CO2 sensor modules was measured to be ∼ 30 s at a flow rate of 1 L/min, and the limits of detection (LoD) of CO2 and CO were assessed to be 5.66 parts per million by volume (ppmv) and 0.94 ppmv, respectively, when the averaging time was 0.25 s. According to the correlation between CO2 and CO concentration in the early fire stage, a method of early fire detection was studied and proposed using the normalized concentration ratio between CO and CO2 (C(CO)/C(CO2)) as the key alarm parameter. Based on gas turbulent diffusion (GTD) model combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, a mobile early fire location method was presented. Correlative experiment results verified that the reported sensor system has a good performance for early fire detection and location.