Ortsverteilte Detektion von Kohlenwasserstoff-Leckagen mit faseroptischer Impulsreflektometrie

摘要

In many industrial areas fast leakage detection and spill locating of environmentally hazardous substances in technical installations with large spatial extension, e.g., chemical plants, pipelines, tanks or waste deposits gains in importance. For a complete and continuous control of such sites distributed chemical sensing is essential. In this paper a new distributed sensor system for fast hydrocarbon leakage detection and localization is presented, which is based on hydrocarbon sensitive optical fibers and optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR). Depending on the used laser pulse width a minimum spatial resolution of 1 - 5 m is obtained, while the minimum response times are in the 15 - 30 s range.