Fiberoptic Pressure Sensor for Austere Environments

Numerous applications within the energy conversion industry require high accuracy pressure measurements in austere environments. Specifically, oil and gas production and delivery, CO2 sequestration, and geothermal driven power systems can require pressure sensing in high temperature (up to 1200°C), high pressure (up to 20,000 psi), and highly corrosive environments. Furthermore, differential pressure sensing can provide a significant advantage in flow measurement and diagnostic applications such as calibrated orifice flow and the measurement of filter fouling. Commercial fiber- based pressure sensing technologies such as fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and Fabry-Perot (FP) sensors represent the current state-of-the art, but are still complex and expensive to manufacture (FBG), or are limited to absolute/gauge pressure sensing only (FP). Prime Photonics proposes to develop a cost-effective fiber optic pressure sensor that is conducive to both gauge and differential pressure sensing applications in austere environments. The core technology of Prime’s concept is our differential fiberoptic waveguide interferometer (DFWI). TheDFWI architecture produces a repeatable interferometric phase shift between two diaphragm-mounted waveguides as a function of applied gauge or differential pressure. Prime Photonics has already demonstrated this technology in a moderate temperature silica-based diaphragm/waveguide configuration. The focus in Phase I will be to refine the DFWI design and transition it to a complete sensor package for ultra-aggressive environments. Prime is proposing an innovative sensor configuration that is lower cost and more broadly applicable than current state-of-the-art fiberoptic pressure sensing technologies. The proposed technology will enable improved monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics in the energy recovery and conversion industry.