|
|
Automotive : Driver Information Systems : NIR spectroscopy fuel quality
|
The rising popularity of flexible-fuel vehicles and an increasing demand from government and legislative bodies for cleaner engine technology has made fuel monitoring a hot area of automotive development. While lambda sensors and other indirect methods of fuel quality analysis have thus far dominated the field , there are under development more direct ways of monitoring fuel quality.
At Melexis we have developed Optical Linear Arrays who can be easily and cost effectively build into a fuel quality control system based on NIR Spectroscopy. Near Infrared Spectroscopy is, according to Wikipedia, a spectroscopic method that uses the near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum (from about 800 nm to 2500 nm). Typical applications include pharmaceutical, medical diagnostics (including blood sugar and oximetry), food and agrochemical quality control, and combustion research, as well as cognitive neuroscience research.
This technology has potentially the brightest future in fuel composition analysis applications. The chemical properties of a fuel can be found by looking at the spectral bands within its NIR or MIR optical spectrum. A simple method for applying spectrum analysis to fuel quality monitoring is to place a Near Infrared (NIR) LED light source between the fuel and a linear variable filter, sitting in front of an optical linear array (OLA). By shining multi-spectral light through the fuel, light passing through the filter and entering the array is split in such a way that the OLA can discriminate between different wavelengths of light. With different wavelengths split over many bands, an OLA can thus obtain an extremely precise optical fingerprint of the liquid present, which can then be compared to known references using a microcontroller and dedicated chemical analysis software. |
 |
Related Application Notes :
Automotive : Driver Information Systems : NIR spectroscopy fuel quality
| Document Title |
File Type |
Size |
Revision |
Date |
|
|
|