A study on the sensing characteristics of VOCs for the development of VOCs detector

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are one of the popular issues of air pollution in Korea, especially in Ulsan city, where much chemical plants are located. It is necessary to detect the VOCs precisely in order to control the air pollution during the plant operation. In general, to examine the concentration of VOCs, gas chromatography (GC) is used. However, most plant operators are using the easy operating handy VOCs detector, which is imported, because GC is difficult to treat and the installation price is high although it is very useful equipment. Therefore, the development of the VOCs detector becomes one of the urgent issues. In this study, sensing characteristics of selected VOCs for the development of VOCs detector was investigated. Semiconductor sensor and several VOCs such as aliphatic, aromatic, and nonhomogeneous hydrocarbons were used for the experiment. Through the various experiments, sensor used in the experiment has shown high linearity and sensitivity for most VOCs in the range of 1-500 ppm concentration. And correction factors for each VOCs were estimated, which is necessary for the treatment of detector.