Electrical characterization of a polymeric sensor for hydrocarbon spillage detection

We present an exhaustive electrical characterization of a novel polymeric sensor. The sensor presented in this research work has been successfully tested for gasoline leakage detection. The sensor has been designed to be used in practical problems such as hydrocarbon spillage (HS). Our sensor can only be utilized for medium size containers, such as the ones typically utilized in gas stations, container trucks, short length pipelines, etc. The characterization results found from our experiments show that the sensor presented here can be efficiently utilized for hydrocarbon spillage detection with response times of about 60 minutes. Such detection times are comparable with the times achieved by similar commercial products. Our experimental results suggest that some careful modifications of the design may help to reduce the detection time to about 15 minutes.