US 12,392,680 B2
Spectral fitting of compact laser-based trace gas sensor measurements for high dynamic range (HDR)
Victor Alexander Miller, II, Sonoma, CA (US); Brendan James Smith, Lakeway, TX (US); and Stuart Buckingham, Austin, TX (US)
Assigned to SeekOps Inc., Austin, TX (US)
Appl. No. 17/761,734
Filed by SeekOps Inc., Austin, TX (US)
PCT Filed Sep. 19, 2020, PCT No. PCT/US2020/051696
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Mar. 18, 2022,
PCT Pub. No. WO2021/055902, PCT Pub. Date Mar. 25, 2021.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/903,443, filed on Sep. 20, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2022/0341806 A1, Oct. 27, 2022
Int. Cl. G01M 3/20 (2006.01)
CPC G01M 3/20 (2013.01) 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
collecting, by an optical absorption spectroscopy-based gas sensor mounted on a vehicle, a gas sample from atmosphere of a survey site containing one or more potential gas sources that are likely to leak at least one toxic or environmentally damaging gas;
detecting, by the optical absorption spectroscopy-based gas sensor, a laser pitched into an optical cavity that contains the gas sample in an environment where non-ideal perturbations including dust and vibration exist, wherein the step of detecting includes:
scanning, by a wing scanning module of the sensor, the laser into wings of an absorption feature in an absorption profile;
transmitting, by the sensor in communication with a processor of a computing device, the detected laser to the processor as a digital signal;
fitting, by a wing based baseline derivation module of the processor, a polynomial to the wings of the scanned laser to derive a baseline signal;
dividing, by a light computation module of the processor, the transmitted signal by the derived baseline signal to eliminate the non-ideal perturbations from the transmitted signal to compute a light signal;
fitting, by a spectral model generation module of the processor, a spectral model with the computed light signal;
displaying, by a user interface of the computing device, a comparison between data of the detected laser and the spectral model;
solving, by a mole fraction solving module of the processor, for mole fractions of gases in the gas sample based on the fitted spectral model in which effects of the non-ideal perturbations are eliminated; and
detecting, by the processor, a leak of the at least one toxic gas in the survey site based on each of the mole fractions of the at least one toxic or environmentally damaging gas in the gas sample without the effects of the non-ideal perturbations.