Indoor air quality measurement made reliable – the TB600C-ES1-TVOC-2000ppm gas sensor module

PEWATRON: The TB600C board is designed for indoor air quality applications and is paired with a ES1 sensor for measurements of gas concentrations close to the upper tolerance limit for VOCs. There are more than 300 known volatile organic compounds, and a sensor claiming to measure the total VOC (TVOC) level must therefore, in principle, be able to detect all 300 known VOCs. The TB600C-ES1-TVOC gas sensor module almost perform the task of measuring all known VOCs and in such an impressive way that is passed most standards for measuring air quality in residential, building and industrial applications.

The key parameters for the gas sensor module to be considered is the signal linearity in combination with the response time of the sensor, the signal zero-point and full-scale drift and the signal repeatability, while always correcting for temperature (built-in function). For the TB600C-ES1-TVOC-2000ppm gas sensor module, the overall accuracy for diffusive flow based measurements is better than +/-5% full-scale and the resolution is < 1 ppm.

The TB600C-ES1-TVOC-2000ppm gas sensor module (see photo above) has a size of 25 x 23 x 11 mm. The module has built-in, generic temperature compensation. The temperature and the humidity is measured using a high-accuracy combined sensor that is located close to the gas sensor. In this way the temperature of the gas sensor can be measured very accurately. The module, in combination with the ES1 sensor, is RoHS compatible, requires a supply voltage between 3 VDC and 5.5 VDC and has as an output a digital UART signal with a 9600 Baud rate. The total power consumption is < 25 mW in continuous mode and has a sleep mode to further reduce the power consumption.