Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2021) 136: 913
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01858-2

Regular Article

Development and performance testing of a miniaturized multi-sensor system combining MOX and PID for potential UAV application in TIC, VOC and CWA dispersion scenarios

¹ Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, 00133, Roma, Italy
² Joint NBC Defence School of Rieti, 02100, Rieti, Italy
³ Department of Industrial and Civil Engineering, University of Pisa, 56122, Pisa, Italy
⁴ Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata, 00133, Rome, Italy
⁵ Unicamillus-Saint Camillus International University of Health Sciences, 00131, Rome, Italy

^a francesca.fumian@esercito.difesa.it

Received: 10 January 2021
Accepted: 11 August 2021
Published online: 6 September 2021

Abstract

The development of a tool to reduce the exposure of personnel in case of intentional or accidental toxic chemicals dispersion scenarios opens the field to new operational perspectives in the domain of operator safety and of critical infrastructure monitoring. The use of two sensors with different operating principles, metal oxide and photo-ionization detector, allows to confirm the presence of specific classes of chemicals in a contaminated area. All instruments are expected to be integrated into the payload of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and used for different purposes such as critical infrastructure surveillance focused on the volatile organic chemical and chemical warfare agents (CWA) detection and the post-incident of contamination level monitoring. In this paper, the authors presented the hardware set-up implemented and the test realized with CWAs simulants and will discuss the results obtained presenting advantages and disadvantages of this system in an application such as a UAV for the detection of chemical substances.