Fire Detection Technique Based on Photoacoustic Principle

JIANG Yalong1, CHEN Tao2, YUAN Hongyong2, ZHANG Yongming1, ZHU Yuquan1, WANG Jinjun1 & MA Suihua1
(1 State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, Anhui, China; 2 Center for Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China)
Abstract: A fire detection system based on photoacoustic (PA) principle is reported. The system operates by selecting gas generated in combustion instead of conventional smoke and temperature as parameter, so it can realize an early fire detection. It consists of a broad-spectrum infrared source ranging from 2 to 5m, a absorption path, a photoacoustic cell, a lock-in amplifier and a sensitive microphone as photoacoustic signal receiver. The reference cell filling with the high-purity gas (here is carbon monoxide)is used as a gas filter selector. The change of gas concentration to be measured in the air is converted into electrical signal and superposed on the initial signal. The gas concentration in the air can be calculated by a simple algorithm according to the relationship between changed photoacousitc signal and gas concentration. Two kinds of Chinese standard fires are tested by the PA detection system. The measurement results show that the system reacts very well to both fires. And a detection limit of 3 ppm of carbon monoxide is achieved experimentally. Keywords: photoacoustic; fire detection; infrared spectrum; gas detection

1 Introduction
Application of fire promoted the development of society, but it had brought huge disaster to peoples lives and national economy[1,2,3]. In order to detect and prevent fire, researchers developed all kinds of fire detectors according to physical phenomenon (e.g. increase in temperature and in concentration of smoke particle) in fire, such as smoke detectors, heat detectors and flame detectors[4],etc. But the measurement of one or more physical parameters is not always sufficient for an early and reliable fire detection[5].For example, little smoke is generated in the complete combustion of alcohol, so smoke detectors are inoperative under the circumstances. Heat detectors and flame detectors arent suit to early fire detection because there are no flames and the increase in temperature is not obvious enough in early fire. Besides the physical characteristics mentioned above, various gaseous products released in the chemical reactions during a fire can be used as characteristic parameters for fire detection such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO 2), methane (CH4), nitrogen oxides (NOX). Carbon monoxide is the most important target gas among these gases due to its zero ambient concentration and ubiquity of carbon in the majority of combustible matter in nature. Actually, generation of gaseous products are much earlier than generation of smoke in the early stage of fire. Consequently, use gas as fire parameter be of much practicable significance. With the further development of gas-sensing techniques, gas detection has become a major area for fire detection. In existing methods for gas detection, photoacoustic method is more and more widely used for fields of fire detection [5-7] and trace gas detection[8-11] due to its high sensitivity and broad dynamic range. It has proven to be one of the best techniques for the identification of trace constituents in gas mixtures and for gas leak detection. Compare to the conventional absorption method, the absorbed intensity instead of the transmitted intensity is measured in photoacoustic technique. Photoacoustic signal intensity is dependent on the magnitude of optical energy absorbed by material to be measured. In 1971, Kreuzer [12,13] analyzed detection limits of photoacoutic technique in theory by combining dye laser with high-sensitivity microphone. For trace gas detection, the detection limits can be of order of magnitude of 0.1 parts per trillion (ppt).

2 Theoretic Background
As early as 1880, photoacoustic effect had been discovered by Bell, and then was investigated by Tyndall and Rontgen. By absorbing a photon with frequency v, an absorber molecule in the gas goes from the ground state E0 to the excited state E1, the energy difference between the states being hv (i.e. E1 E0).The excited molecules collide with any other molecule in the gas and convert the energy into translational energy of the colliding molecules. The excited molecule can lose its energy and return to the ground state by this way. Gas is heated by transferring the light energy absorbed to its own thermal energy through the process of radiationless relaxation.

Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(No:50476023)

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The gas (here is CO) sealed in a cell can expand after absorbing the energy of incident light, then the acoustic signal generated is converted into electrical signal by a microphone. The modulation of light intensity induces a similar modulation in temperature in gas if the modulation frequency in incident intensity is below relaxation frequency in relaxation process. According to gas law, the modulation in temperature in gas sealed in a cell produces a periodic fluctuation with the same frequency as the modulation frequency of incident beam. Namely, the modulated light beam in intensity excites the sound wave in gas sample, which is detected by a microphone and converted into an electrical signal. The electrical signal is fed into the input of an amplifier. Fig.1 represents the stage of this process. The more detailed principles of photoacoustic are described elsewhere [14,15].

Noise

Generation a modulation of light beam

Absorption of radiation

Excitation of sound

Detection of sound

Amplification

Signal+Noise Fig.1 Steps in generation of photoacoustic signal

As mentioned above, the temperature of sample gas in the photoacousitc cell will increase after absorbing energy of incident beam, and generate a heat source H(r, t).The source H(r, t) excites acoustic wave in the photoacousitc cell. If we think the gas in the cell as perfect gas, sound signal is described by the following formula [16]. 2 p 1 2 p ( 1) H ( r , t ) = c 2 t 2 c2 t (1)

Where c is the velocity of sound produced in the photocoustic cell; =Cp/Cv is the heat capacity ratio . Cp, Cv is specific heat at constant pressure and specific heat at constant volume, respectively. By taking the Fourier transform of formula (1) and expressing the p(r, ) as an infinite series of the normal mode solutions pj(r) of the homogeneous wave equation. The amplitude Aj() of acoustic signal can be expressed by the followings.

Aj () =

( 1) * p j (r ) H (r , )dV i jV V

2 j

(1

2 i ) 2 j jQj

(2)

Where Qj is the quality factor of normal mode pj(r) and p*j(r) the conjugate complex of pj(r).The photoacoustic signal Aj(j) reaches its maximum value when modulation frequency /2 is equal to the jth normal frequency of photoacoustic cell. According to H(r, t)=(r, t), the acoustic signal in photoacoustic cell can be expressed by equation (3).

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Aj ( j ) =

( 1) jV j

p*j (r )I (r , ) dV

(3)

In a cylindrical resonator with a length of L and radius of R, three kinds of normal modes will be excited: azimuthal modes, radial modes and longitudinal modes. These modes are named by a variable m, n and q, respectively. The jth normal mode pj(r) and normal frequency of photoacoustic cell are given by (here j= m, n, q, indicating azimuthal, radial and longitudinal mode, respectively) equations (4) and (5).

p j (r ) = J m (

mn q z r ) cos( ) cos( m ) R l
1 c q f j = [( ) 2 + ( mn ) 2 ] 2 2 l R

(4) (5)

Where c denotes sound velocity in gas in PA cell, Jm is type 1 Bessel functions, mn is the nth root of the first derivative of Bessel function of series m.

3 Experiment
3.1 System Design Fig.2 is the schematic diagram of photoacoustic system for fire detection fabricated at our laboratory. The excited source used in the experiment is a broad-spectrum IR source (Reflect-P1S) with a wavelength ranging from 2 m to 5 m. The incident beam is modulated by a mechanical chopper periodically after reflected by a parabola. The frequency of chopper is controlled by a frequency controller which supplies the reference frequency for a lock-in amplifier. Stability of the source radiation should be insured. Otherwise the system will result in a inaccurate detection and appendant false alarm. The modulated IR beam passes through photoaoucstic cell through absorption path, combustion products from a fire are measured in absorption path. As fire products are mixtures of all kinds of gases and smoke particles, they are filtered before entering the absorption path in order to avoid light attenuation caused by smoke scatter. The photoacoustic cell is filled with high-purity carbon monoxide, which absorbs incident beam and generates a acoustic wave in PA cell. The acoustic signal is picked-up by a highly sensitive microphone and amplified by a preamplifier and lock-in amplifier. Then it is fed into a multichannel signal collector and a computer for data acquisition and processing. Photoacoustic Cell IR Source Absorption Path CO Parabola Chopper Microphone Gas in Gas out Preamplifier PC

Frequency Controller

Lock-in Amplifier

Data Acquisition

Fig.2 Schematic diagram of the photoacoustic gas detection system

Fig.3 shows cross-section of the photoacoustic cell. It consists of a central cylinder with a radius of 0.06 m and length of 0.152 m, asymmetrically connects with two outer cylinders with a radius of 0.032 m and length of 0.1 m as acoustic filters. The construct plays an important role to attenuate noise generated by absorption of incident beam on the windows. The whole photoacoustic cell is made of stainless steel and the inner surface is polished to enhance the quality factor of cell. 150

Each acoustic filter has a three-part structure. The middle one is /4 long (the value is 0.025 m,a maximum of insertion loss occurs when the length is odd multiple of /4,here indicates the wavelength of acoustic wave), the two others are /2 (0.05 m) and /4 (0.025 m) long, respectively. Two infrared transmitting windows made of CaF 2 with a radius of 0.008 m and with a thickness of 0.002 m are mounted on the two ends of cell. The microphone (type 4192) from B & K company in Denmark is mounted on surface at the center of the central cylinder. Microphone CaF2 window

5.0 2.5 2.5

2.5 2.5 5.0

Fig.3 Cross-section of photoacoustic cell

3.2 Results and Discussion Smoldering wood fire and flaming n-heptane fire are tested in order to measure the performance of the PA system for fire detection. The system was preheated and zeroed before beginning the test. The high-purity N 2 is filled with measuring path as the initial signal of system. Then carbon monoxide of 3ppm standard concentration enters the measuring path to calibrate the system. The photoacousitc signal has obvious attenuation, which shows that the detection limit of the system reaches 3ppm at least. Jackson and Kobins measured the maximum CO concentration generated in six types of European standard fire in 1994, and the experiment showed that even the least CO concentration generated in flaming spirits fire reached 16 ppm. So the detection limit of 3ppm concentration is enough for fire detection. The dimension of the test box used as a combustion products generator in experiment is 0.5 m0.5 m0.8 m (LWH). Smoldering wood fire experiment is conducted in a heating plate placed in the center of the box. Place the same kind of beech wood block (0.01 m0.02 m0.035 m) radially on the heating plate with a diameter of 0.22 m, heating until 500 .Combustion products enter the absorption path of system through a PVC pipe which connects the test box at one end. The process of data acquisition and processing in whole experiments is controlled by a computer. Fig.4(a) and Fig.4(b) show the measurement results of CO concentration in smoldering wood fire and flaming n-heptane fire experiment respectively. The photoacoustic signal detected by microphone attenuates gradually after experiment starting, which shows that carbon monoxide gas is generated in test. The PA signal begins to attenuate because carbon monoxide entering absorption path absorbs some light. It can be seen from the Fig.4 that the concentration of carbon monoxide rises gradually with time. The concentration of carbon monoxide generated in both smoldering wood fire and flaming n-heptane fire exceeds 3ppm. It can be known from experiment conducted above that carbon monoxide gas with a concentration exceeding detection limit would be generated if there is a fire in a space to be measured. Generally, pumping air to be detected into system through a sampling pipe can shorten detection time. Therefore, we can judge whether a fire occurs according to variation in carbon monoxide concentration and a certain algorithm.

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26
40 35

24 22 20

/ppm

ppm CO concentration/

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

CO concentration

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100 110 120

t/s

t/s

(a) Smoldering wood fire (b) Flaming n-heptane fire Fig.4 Variation in carbon monoxide concentration generated in two types of simulated fire

4 Conclusion
With the development of modern measurement technique and all kinds of intense laser devices, photoacoustic technique has been widely used in various fields such as physics, chemistry and biology, etc. For fire detection, photoacoustic technology is a very effective method. Its high-sensitivity makes a fire can be detected in early stage. Experiments show that photoacoustic technology for fire detection is effective for both flaming combustion and smoldering combustion. As a signal source, the design of photoacoustic cell is one of the most key factors, whose performance determines to a great extent the resolution and detectability of the whole system. At the present time, we are making a further study on structure of photoacoustic cell in order to enhance its sensitivity. We expect that the system can be not only used for fire detection but also for fields of trace gas analysis and leak detection. References
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