Reflective-radiation sensor

A reflective-radiation sensor as a high limit might be practical. It is difficult to measure (detect) scaling, thus, it is not very practical to adjust for, or automatically prevent, its formation. Operators and supervisors must rely on knowledge and experience to anticipate scale problems and prepare to avoid or forestall them. (See sec. 8.3.)... 

The beam of the radiation passing through the studied object interact with the material that induces a certain scattering pattern of the reflected radiation detectable by the radiation sensors. This scattering is caused by the... 

As the reflected radiation is emitted from the sample in a random direction, diffusely reflected radiation can be separated from, potentially sensor-blinding, specular reflections. Common techniques are off-angle positioning of the sensor with respect to the position(s) of the illumination source(s) and the use of polarisation filters. Application restrictions apply to optically clear samples with little to no scattering centres, thin samples on an absorbing background and dark samples. In either of these cases, the intensity of radiation diffusely reflected off such samples is frequently insufficient for spectral analysis. While dark objectives remain a problem, thin and/or transparent samples can be measured in transmission or in transflectance. 

In internal reflection, at angles of incidence larger than the critical angle, electromagnetic radiation is totally reflected (attenuated total reflectance, ATR. see Section 16.2.2.4 and Fig. 5). This special ca.se is very important in analysis for two approaches. First, simple transportation of radiation within the fiber (or a waveguide). Second, in total reflection, an evane.scent field appears in which the electrical field vector decays exponentially in the optically less dense medium. Every change within the medium with lower refractive index influences the field vector coupled to the field in the optically denser medium. Therefore, the totally reflected radiation contains information about effects on the other side of the phase boundary (the medium with lower refractive index) [20], [144]. Various principles to interogate this effect are known and used in evanescent field sensors. 

Figure 15.12. DiComp diamond film internal reflection element sensor. The radiation passes through the ZnSe support into the diamond film for internal reflection. The sensor housing acts as a waveguide to direct the radiation to and from the diamond IRE.

The sensor unit of an IRET usually consists of an infrared sensor, in most cases a thermopile sensor in a TO-5 or TO-46 housing, a gold plated barrel, which reflects the infrared radiation from the ear to the sensor and reduces the sensitivity of the sensor to ambient temperature changes (see Fig. 3.43). 

The inclusion of radiative heat transfer effects can be accommodated by the stagnant layer model. However, this can only be done if a priori we can prescribe or calculate these effects. The complications of radiative heat transfer in flames is illustrated in Figure 9.12. This illustration is only schematic and does not represent the spectral and continuum effects fully. A more complete overview on radiative heat transfer in flame can be found in Tien, Lee and Stretton [12]. In Figure 9.12, the heat fluxes are presented as incident (to a sensor at T,, ) and absorbed (at TV) at the surface. Any attempt to discriminate further for the radiant heating would prove tedious and pedantic. It should be clear from heat transfer principles that we have effects of surface and gas phase radiative emittance, reflectance, absorptance and transmittance. These are complicated by the spectral character of the radiation, the soot and combustion product temperature and concentration distributions, and the decomposition of the surface. Reasonable approximations that serve to simplify are ... 

A fiber-optic device has been described that can monitor chlorinated hydrocarbons in water (Gobel et al. 1994). The sensor is based on the diffusion of chlorinated hydrocarbons into a polymeric layer surrounding a silver halide optical fiber through which is passed broad-band mid-infrared radiation. The chlorinated compounds concentrated in the polymer absorb some of the radiation that escapes the liber (evanescent wave) this technique is a variant of attenuated total reflection (ATR) spectroscopy. A LOD for chloroform was stated to be 5 mg/L (5 ppm). This sensor does not have a high degree of selectivity for chloroform over other chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons, but appears to be useful for continuous monitoring purposes. 

Fibre optic-based flow-through optical biosensors The dramatic advances in fibre optic development in die last decade have promoted construction of sensors where radiation, whether emitted, transmitted or reflected, is conducted fi-om the sample to the detection system. The wide variety of available optical waveguide types (solid rods, hollow cylinders, micro-planar geometries) has been used with varying success in sensor development. 

Most present-day fiber-optic sensors use linear diode arrays combined with optical gratings and measure the absorption, transmission, fluorescence, and reflection in UV, visible, and NIR regions (see Table 3.1). Light travels to the sampling probe via one fiber-optic cable and returns to the instrument via a second. Laser excitation permits long-distance transmission of excitation radiation to get a useful signal from the sample. 

The last term in Eq. 13—46 is due to the radiation effect and represents the radiation correction. Note that the radiation correction term is most significant when the convection heat transfer coefficient is small and the emissivity of the surface of the sensor is large. Therefore, the sensor should be coated with a material of high reflectivity (low emissivity) to reduce the radiation effect. 

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