Sensitivity Enhancement of Methane Detection Based On Hollow Core Photonic Crystal Fiber

Abstract

Monitoring methane (CH4) concentration is essential in many industrial and environmental applications. Emission of such gases is indeed important to detect for health, safety and environmental reasons. The major risk in all these areas is an explosion hazard, which may occur if methane reaches its Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) of5% concentration in air. For that reason, it is necessary to develop gas sensors to monitor that methane levels below this value. Due to a weak absorption of methane, this gas is difficult to detect using conventional methods.Hollow core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PBF) have emerged as a promising technology in the field of gas sensing. The strong interaction achievable with these fibers are especially advantageous for the detection of weakly absorbing regions of methane. In this paper, we investigated, by full vectorial finite element method (FV-FEM) in Rsoft CAD environment, the dependency of relative sensitivity on the fiber parameters and wavelength. Consequently, we introduced the optimal structureof an index guiding hollow core photonic crystal fiber capable of measuring methane concentrations down to 0.1%in air. The simulations showed that the sensing sensitivity increased with an increase in the core diameter and a decrease in the distance between centers of two adjacent holes.