Abstract

It is often desirable or necessary to measure the optical properties of liquids and gases in remote locations. Examples include measurement of the absorption and scattering of ocean water or the monitoring of liquid quality during manufacturing large volumes of product. In such cases it may be inconvenient or dangerous or both to retrieve samples for off line measurement and it may be too risky or expensive to submerse the appropriate conventional instruments. In this paper a device is described in which laser light is delivered to a remote sample of liquid by a fiber optic and collected through another fiber optic enabling measurement of optical absorption, scattering and also, if fluorescing materials are present, their emissions. The device is shown schematically in Fig. 1. In a safe location, in a console, are all the operator controls, laser light sources, beam handling and control optics and electronics to generate the light, deliver it to the send fiber and sense light returned by the appropriate collector lens return fiber combination. At the distal end of the send fiber a lens collimates the beam for transmission through the medium. A second lens collects the transmitted or scattered light and focuses it into a return fiber. Detectors and electronics in the console record and process this data.

© 1998 Optical Society of America