Prof. SorptionSorption expert in Gas/vapor - solid interactions

Speed of Sound sensor DVS

Name: Speed of Sound sensor DVS
Uploaded: 2019-02-06T13:50:37+00:00
Duration: 35 s
Channel: Prof. Sorption
Description: Surface Measurement Systems built a speed-of-sound sensor that detects temperature shifts smaller than 0.001 degrees and can distinguish CO2 from N2. A…

6 Feb 2019 · 1 min

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0:35

Surface Measurement Systems built a speed-of-sound sensor that detects temperature shifts smaller than 0.001 degrees and can distinguish CO2 from N2. A person standing nearby once changed the readings just from body heat, showing how sensitive it is.

Questions this video answers

February 6, 2019.

Prof. Sorption.

It can see changes in temperature in the speed of sound of less than a thousandth of a degree.

The speed of sound sensor was developed at SMS to fulfill a need that we had in our DVS instrumentation. One of the strengths of surface measurement systems is that we've got a very strong scientific core to the company. One of our technical guys had the idea of trying to use speed of sound as a. As a measurement for vapour composition.
One of the most important things when you're measuring speed of sound is the change in temperature and change the speed of sound in a gas with temperatures, it's very sensitive. You can also use it as a thermometer. And we first noticed this when we got the speed of sound unit first partially working. And we had it in a little aluminium tube without much thermal mass. And Zach leaned over to have a look at it, and I could see the speed of sound change just from the heat from this face heating up the tube. It turns out we can see changes in temperature in the speed of sound less than a thousandth of a degree.
There's interest, of course, for those investigating carbon capture, because it's very sensitive to carbon dioxide and can detect carbon dioxide from the presence of nitrogen. And those are often problematic for some of the current sensors. So there are lots of applications that we haven't really invested yet where we think the speed of sound sensor could be really useful. We can validate the technique and actually prove to other parties that we've got the technology to validate our process, because it's really important in a lot of controlled environments, pharmaceuticals, that all processes are fully validated, and that's something we can improve on it.