How do carbon monoxide detectors work?

Question

I am trying to create a detector to see how much carbon monoxide is in a room. I am looking to find an specific average throughout a day, not just if the carbon monoxide level is too high.
By the way, I am doing a project on Indoor Air Pollution.
Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

Most Carbon Monoxide detectors determine the amount of CO present in the air by using an electrolytic sensor. If the value is high, the alarm sounds.

There are digital CO detectors available which will read you the level on an LED number display. You can write down the numbers on the display at predetermined intervals and average them after 24 hours has passed. Most houses should read 0 all of the time. I've only seen mine say something other than 0 when I was working on the car in the garage and had it running for a couple minutes (with the garage door open although still allowed enough into the house to cause it to display, but not alarm). Take a look just past halfway down this page and you will see a couple models with a digital readout on them:

http://www.firstalert.com/CarbonMonoxideAlarmsCatalog.aspx