Remote gas sensing in full-scale fire with sub-terahertz waves

Summary form only given, as follows. The performance of a remote gas sensor based on a continuous-wave sub-terahertz spectrometer with an operation bandwidth between 200 and 500 GHz was investigated in a full-scale fire. The spectra of smoke show the existence of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and water molecules, which were generated due to the combustion of a foam urethane block. The HCN content estimated from the absorption intensity agrees quite well with that obtained from the chemical analysis of gases sampled from the fire site.