Reducing the Energy Consumption of a Laser Photo-Acoustic SF6 Gas Analyzer

Experimental studies of the operating modes of a laser photo-acoustic SF6 gas analyzer that were aimed at reducing its energy consumption were carried out. It was shown in the experiments that an average power of CO2 laser radiation of at least 100 mW is required for the assured detection of low SF6 concentrations (less than 100 ppb). To reduce the energy consumption of the gas analyzer, it is proposed to decrease the repetition frequency of CO2 laser pulses by several times and operate on subharmonics of the resonance frequency of the photo-acoustic detector. The experimental results made it possible to reduce the energy consumption of the gas analyzer to 15 V A and use a Li-ion battery from a laptop to power it. The duration of the continuous operation of the gas analyzer on one battery charge was at least 6 h.