Reference projects

For rooms with a potential explosion hazard, it is necessary to take measures to reduce the explosion risk to an acceptable level. One of those measures is to place explosive-gas sensors inside the hazardous room. To avoid a formation of explosive gas mixtures, the sensor should activate emergency ventilation as soon as it will detect a critical gas mixture concentration. The thermal conductivity XEN-3880 sensor from Xensor Integration and acoustic sensors were used within the experimental chamber to perform the necessary hydrogen concentration measurements.

The simulation laboratory of Centro Nacional del Hidrógeno (CNH2) in Spain is specialized in thermo-fluid dynamic analysis for different technologies related to hydrogen. In order to create a flexible sensor network for hydrogen (simulated with helium) leaks detection and characterization CHN2 asked Xensor Integration to develop a thermal conductivity sensor XEN-5320 with read-out electronics and WiFi data transmission. The developed sensors were successfully used in different experiments to validate the mathematical models about a hydrogen leakage in an enclosed space.

AeroDelft, a non-profit company led by students from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), is aiming to design, build and fly the world’s first liquid hydrogen-powered fuel cell aircraft. The design of an unmanned prototype was unveiled in April 2019 and will fly for the first time later this year. The full-scale aircraft is set to take off from Rotterdam The Hague Airport in 2021. Xensor Integration is proudly sponsering this project by providing hands-on experience with hydrogen monitoring and XEN-5320 gas sensors to measure and monitor the hydrogen concentration within the aircraft.

Thin-film calorimetry is a powerful tool for the investigation of a wide variety of materials and their phase transitions for very small samples in the nanogram range. Ultrafast chip-calorimetry stimulated great progress in the study of crystallization kinetics and nucleation mechanisms in technologically important polymers, metals, and composites. Advances in ultrafast chip calorimetry provide the possibility to generate non-equilibrium states and to study phase-transition kinetics at microsecond and even faster time scales.

The performed experiments at the University of Rostock focused on the dynamics of the temperature distributions in the XEN-39472 calorimetric sensor from Xensor Integration and the theoretical background for ultrafast calorimetry.

The highly combustible nature of hydrogen poses a great hazard, creating a number of problems with its safety and handling. As a part of safety studies related to the use of hydrogen in a confined environment, it is extremely important to have a good knowledge of the dispersion mechanism.

The performed tests evaluated the influence of the initial conditions at the leakage source on the dispersion and mixing characteristics in a confined environment. Throughout the test, during the release and the subsequent dispersion phase, temporal profiles of hydrogen concentration are measured using thermal conductivity sensors within the enclosure. In addition, the BOS (Background Oriented Schlieren) technique is used to visualise the cloud evolution inside the enclosure. These instruments allowed the observation and quantification of the stratification effects.