Research on the environmental adaptability of combustible gas leakage monitors under extreme temperature conditions

Combustible gas leakage monitors (CGLMs) are widely used to detect gas leaks in factory buildings, catering, and gas pipelines. They are often exposed to various complex environments, particularly extreme temperature environments, which will lead to component failure, poor measurement accuracy, or even loss of function. However, there is still lacking of a systematic method to evaluate the environmental adaptability of CGLMs under extreme high- and low-temperature environments. In this paper, a comprehensive and innovative method to quantitatively estimate the environmental adaptability of CGLMs under extreme temperature environments through combining function, integrity, and safeguard capability parameters obtained from different measurements was proposed. The measurement performances and battery performance of laser methane sensor (LMS) and catalyst combustion methane sensor (CCMS) were investigated. It is revealed that the high-temperature condition even 75 degrees C has small effect on the measurement accuracy of the LMS and CCMS, and the measurement accuracy reduces about 6.67%, while the low-temperature condition has an obvious effect on the measurement performance of CCMS. The measurement accuracy of CCMS drops by 50% at - 35 degrees C. Based on the analytic hierarchy process, a comprehensive evaluation model has been developed to effectively evaluate the environmental adaptability of LMS and CCMS. The work provides engineering guidance for the application of CGLMs in an extreme environment.