Research Spotlight: Fan Ren
 Professor
Ren and collaborators from the Departments of Chemical Engineering,
Electrical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering are working to
demonstrate a prototype of a hydrogen sensing system to be used specifically for
a Ford dealership (Orlando, Florida) that is a test site for a hydrogen-fueled
vehicle program. The hydrogen-fueled buses and cars will be stored and will have
maintenance performed on them in a large work area at the Ford dealership. The
sensing system will include six on-site sensors, which can trigger an alarm
and/or send messages to computers, cell phones or PDAs when a preset set
hydrogen threshold level is detected. A plug-in, consumer-friendly system,
similar to smoke detectors or carbon monoxide monitors, is envisioned. Photos of
the remote wireless transmitter module (left), the monitoring receiver (middle),
and the packaged discrete sensor (bottom) are shown below. The sensor package
itself will be
integrated with the transmitter module and the alarm signal can be received by
the
monitoring receiver.
GaN Schottky diode and AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors are
proposed as the sensing elements. Packaged discrete sensors and temperature
correction differential sensors, signal amplifier, differential detection
circuit, microcontroller, and wireless transmitter will be designed and
fabricated. ZnO nanowires based sensors will also be tested as the sensing
element.
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