Methane sensor options

Other Hardware Sensors
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I'm looking at options for portable methane sensing for wetlands gas flux assessments. Very early and looking at what is viable. We're looking at methane flux around wetlands, so low concentrations (2ppm seems to be about average). Other people have previously used flux chambers (putting a container over the top of the soil) to concentrate the gas to levels the low-cost sensors can read.

There's a thread in Project Guidance (here) from a couple of weeks ago where jremington mentions these:

https://nevadanano.com/mps-methane-gas-sensor/(Datasheet available here)

If I purchased one of these units ($200), would the simplest method to connect it to an Arduino unit be to order an analogue version of the sensor? At that point it would only output the concentration of 'gas' rather than differentiating between different gases, and I'd have to put an ADC/amp on any signal to get a reasonable resolution (?). It feels like I might be trying to connect race track tyres to an old junker.

Is connecting to a UART version of this sensor something an Arduino can do? I googled a fair bit, and found no mentions of anyone connecting it to an Arduino, which leads me to believe that either 1)it can't be done, or 2) there's no libraries, and I'm definitely not capable of writing my own.

Anyone know any other options? I'd be happy to pay the $200 for a sensor if I could actually communicate with it properly.

Any help/advice appreciated.
Thanks

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The Nevadanano sensor is just one example that would have sufficient sensitivity to measure gas concentrations in that range. You have to ask the company for the interface details. There are others, so don't limit your search to that company.

There are many scientific papers relevant to the research you mention, and they should give the instrumentation details. Don't hesitate to contact the authors of interesting papers, if you have questions about the methodology.

1 Like
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Thanks, I'll look into other manufacturers of the high-end ones.

I've done a quick lit search, a couple of hours, most of the papers I've found are using sensors like NGM2611 or in the same 'family', which seem to get reasonable resolution, but all warn that the manufacturer specs are very low for measuring atmospheric methane. I'll keep looking more thoroughly today.

Thanks for the help.

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