Chlordetect: Commercial Calcium Aluminate Based Conductimetric Sensor for Chloride Presence Detection

Magda F Torres-Luque (1, 2) , Johann F Osma (3) , Mauricio Sanchez-Silva (4) , Emilio Bastidas-Arteaga (1) , Franck Schoefs (1)

1 TRUST - Contrôle de santé fiabilité et calcul des structures
2 CAPACITÉS SAS
3 CMUA - Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
4 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Chloride presence affects different environments (soil, water, concrete) decreasing their qualities. In order to assess chloride concentration this paper proposes a novel sensor for detecting and measuring it. This sensor is based on electric changes of commercial monocalcium aluminate (CA) when it interacts with chloride aqueous solutions. CA is used as a dielectric material between two coplanar capacitors. The geometry proposed for this sensor allows to assess the chloride content profile, or to make four times the same measurement. Besides, the experimental design gives us the possibility of study not just the chloride effect, but also the time and some geometric effects due to the sensor design. As a result, this sensor shows a limit of detection, sensitivity, and response time: 0.01 wt % Cl − and 0.06 wt % Cl − , and 2 min, respectively, comparable with other non invasive techniques as optical fibre sensors.

Mots clés: chloride concentration; chloride sensors; monocalcium aluminate; dielectric spectroscopy; corrosion; dielectric materials

Domaines: Génie civil; Matériaux

Magda F Torres-Luque, Johann F Osma, Mauricio Sanchez-Silva, Emilio Bastidas-Arteaga, Franck Schoefs. Chlordetect: Commercial Calcium Aluminate Based Conductimetric Sensor for Chloride Presence Detection. Sensors, 2017, 17 (2099), pp.1-19. ⟨10.3390/s17092099⟩. ⟨hal-01589452⟩