Infrared optical gas-measuring device and gas-measuring process

Abstract

An improved gas-measuring device and a gas-measuring process is provided for determining the concentration of a gas by infrared absorption. The improvement is the compact design of the gas-measuring device and the higher reliability of the measurement results furnished by the gas-measuring device and the gas-measuring process. The gas-measuring device has an infrared radiation source (1), a pyramid-like beam splitter (7), and a quadrant detector, which has two measuring detectors (3, 4) and two reference detectors (5, 6). This guarantees a compact design of the gas-measuring device and, as a consequence, low fault liability of the measurement. The gas-measuring process includes an advantageous evaluation of the measuring signals (M1, M2) received by the two measuring detectors (3, 4) and of the measuring signals (R1, R2) received by the two reference detectors (5, 6). The plurality of the measuring signals (M1, M2, R1, R2) and the manner of their evaluation leads to a more reliable determination of the gas concentration.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.