Applications and Perspectives of Ultrasonic Multi-Gas Analysis with Simultaneous Flowmetry

We have developed ultrasonic instrumentation for simultaneous flow and composition measurement in a variety of gas mixtures. Flow and composition are respectively derived from measurements of the difference and average of sound transit times in opposite directions in a flowing process gas. We have developed a sound velocity-based algorithm to compensate for the effects of additional gases, allowing the concentrations of a pair of gases of primary interest to be acoustically measured on top of a varying baseline from ‘third party’ gases whose concentrations in the multi-gas mixture are measured by other means. Several instruments are used in the CERN ATLAS experiment. Three monitor C3F8, (R218), and CO2 coolant leaks into N2-purged environmental envelopes. Precision in molar concentration of better than 2 × 10−5 is routinely seen in mixtures of C3F8 in N2 in the presence of varying known concentrations of CO2. Further instruments monitor air ingress and C3F8 vapor flow (at high mass flows around 1.1 kg s−1) in the 60 kW thermosiphon C3F8 evaporative cooling recirculator. This instrumentation and analysis technique, targeting binary pairs of gases of interest in multi-gas mixtures, is promising for mixtures of anesthetic gases, particularly in the developing area of xenon anesthesia.