Design of Remote Helium Mass-Spectrometer Leak-Detector: An Instrumentation Study

A novel type of remote He-mass spectrometer leak detector has been successfully developed,which is capable of remote on-line detecting a possible leak hole,under high risk environments or in hard to reach places or without stopping a complicated facility.The original work included: a three-axis control motion platform carrying the necessary experimental set-up,a mobile-probe,PLC-based(programmable logic controller) control units and CCD video-cameras.The new leak-detector works in injection and sniffing modes.The remote leak-detector was manually calibrated with a standard leak orifice and repeatedly tested by means of the remote control probe,movable along the 180 o arc guide-rail and with a leak detection angle of 270 o.The results show that the novel remote leak detector is capable of accurately detecting the leakage rate and precisely identifying the leaking spot(s) in real time.