Phase II: Laboratory Investigation of Portable Instruments for Submarine Air Monitoring

摘要

Drager tubes are currently used to supplement the atmosphere analysis measurements made aboard US Navy submarines. The submarine fleet has requested that these tubes be replaced with a less labor intensive measurement system. Due to recent developments in gas sensing instrumentation, it is possible to replace many of the existing detectors with instruments that will incorporate more than one sensor at a time. This report is a continuation of an evaluation of portable instruments for use in submarines as air monitors. This is the second phase of a three-phase program concerned with investigating potential detection methods to replace the Drager tubes. The sensors being evaluated in phase two are carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen chloride (HCl), and broad range hydrocarbons (BRH). In this phase, the Drager Multiwarn II and the Enmet Omni 4000 demonstrate good performance for the detection of CO2 and HCN. The poor performance and accuracy of the HCl and BRH sensors results are shown. Further investigations are needed to find suitable detection methods for HCl and BRH.