Evaluation and Analysis of Commercially Available Electrochemical Carbon Monoxide Sensors for Aircraft Applications

Abstract

Commercial airline flight in the United States of America is under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which has set standards for the amount of harmful or unpleasant compounds onboard aircraft to improve occupant safety and comfort. Carbon monoxide (CO), one of these regulated compounds, is of particular interest to the FAA in addition to sensors that are able to properly detect CO inside the airline cabin. In this study, a total of ten commercially available CO sensors were tested and evaluated. The sensors were operated in an environmentally sealed chamber where the total pressure and CO gas concentration were controlled. The sensors were primarily tested in known concentrations of CO in nitrogen, while additional experiments were performed to study the effect of oxygen (O2) on the sensors. The sensors’ steady state and transient responses were analyzed. The repeatability of the sensors’ measurements was also investigated with and without O2.