An Innovative Sensor Pellet for CO/Fire Detector
Researchers: Dr Mohamad Zailani Abu Bakar, Encik Syamsul B. Abdullah and Dr Mohd. Rizal Arshad
The utilization of semiconductor based sensor pellet in most of gas and fire detectors has gained a lot of interest in safety technology. This approach gives wide advantages such as the simplicity in device structure, low cost for fabrication, robustness in practical application and adaptability to a wide variety of reductive and oxidative gases. This technology involves the detection and conversion of the gases evolved from fire such as carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide on the pellet via catalytic reaction.
Most of existing semiconductor sensor pellets are not reliable in which the detections occur at higher temperature (>250C) and higher concentration of carbon monoxide (>200 ppm). To overcome such problems, a new sensor pellet that contains a mixture of ZnO/SnO2 (Zinc Oxide and Tin Oxide) was made using a simple and low cost method compared to the existing methods. The performance of the pellet was enhanced by integrating metal impurity which acts as catalyst for the reaction. The main advantage of the newly developed pellet is that it can detect carbon monoxide from fire at concentration as low as 75 ppm and at lower temperature (<100C) compared to existing sensors. The developed sensor pellet can be easily slotted into a prototype of portable gas/fire detector system that can be used especially in houses in Malaysia to prevent fire hazards
For more information contact Dr. Mohamad Zailani Abu Bakar
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