Gas Sensing Solutions

Carbon Dioxide Gas Sensors – Emerging Applications
and Potential for Energy Harvesting
Des Gibson
Gas Sensing Solutions Ltd
www.gassensing.co.uk
Smart Grids Seminar & Workshop – 13 th Dec 2012

Gas Sensing Solutions Ltd: story so far……
• Established June 2006 – team highly experienced in R&D, product dev,
manufacturing & commercialisation of new technologies / products
• Product offering: worlds lowest power CO 2 NDIR gas sensor -
• Routes to global markets established and company trading
• Intellectual property in place and protected
• Established manufacturing and supply chain
• product launched - fastest CO 2 NDIR sensor in the world
• Over 30,000 sensors delivered to date
TM

Applications

LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

Benefits
• Significant waste of energy and money
• Excess running of fans
• Excess heating of cold intake air
• Excess cooling of warm intake air

Motivation
Potential Savings of 25% of total
building energy costs
40% of world energy consumed by
commercial buildings

Where to use
Wherever there is substantial and variable
human occupancy.
• Schools, Universities
• Office Buildings
• Retail Mall
• Cinemas, Theatres
• Trains

Enabling Technology – CO 2 Sensing
Fit-and-Forget Sensors
– Low power – battery or energy harvesting
– No user calibration
– Low Cost
– Wireless

Mid Infra-Red LED & Photodiode
- Low power consumption: < 3.5 mW
- Intrinsic gas selectivity
- No wavelength drift: simple calibration required
- Minimal stabilisation time on switch-on: < 2 sec
- High speed pulsing capability > 10k Hz
- Scalable: LED/PD semiconductor processing, plastic optics,
non-precision optical alignment
LED
PD
Source
Detector

Products In Production
TM
CO 2 range: 1 to 100%
0 to 1%

MID Infra Red LED
• GSS LED
•Optimised for CO2
Detection
•Long Lifetime
•Robust

MID IR LED Manufacture

Year

Schneider Electric CO 2 Transmitter
•10 Year Autonomous Operation
GSS CO2 sensor
1mJ/measurement
5ms start-up

Wireless CO2, T & RH Sensor
●CO 2 specifications
● Energy/ measurement 1mJ (≈ 1msmt every 2,5 min)
● Resolution = 10ppm RMS @ 1000ppm
● Range = 0 – 3000ppm
● Starting-up time < 5ms (electronics initialization)
●Temperature & Humidity sensors specifications
● 0,2 C (15 to 30 C)
● 2% Rh (20% to 80% Rh)
●Power supply characteristics
● Battery output voltage = 3.6V (AA type)
● Battery lifetime ≈ >10 years (≈ 1 msmt every 2,5 min)
● Total power consumption < 80 μW
●Communication
● ZigBee compliant

Conclusions
• Large and Growing Market Worldwide
• >30k sensors sold to date
Partners in USA, China, Europe and Japan
• Focusing on Energy Harvesting Deployments