A new phase-modulation approach allows one detector to detect two gases simultaneously with high sensitivity

Real-time multi-component trace gas detection is urgently required in environmental monitoring, industrial safety, and process control (Credit: Shutterstock / Danicek)

Detecting several gases at once is crucial in areas such as environmental monitoring, industrial physics and fault diagnosis in electrical equipment. Methane is a key sign of natural-gas leakage, while acetylene, can indicate high-temperature faults such as arcing in transformer oil.

The challenge right now is that many sensitive gas sensors either need separate detectors for each gas or measure gases one after another, which means they cannot capture truly simultaneous changes.

A team of researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have recently developed a new approach using light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy , or LITES.

In this method, gas molecules absorb modulated laser light resulting in a small amount…