During Sensor+Test 2025 trade fair, we showed our new HVAC and thermal runaway demos.

HVAC demo:
A remote worker is comfortably seated at her smart home office. The air quality is good, and she feels focused and productive. With closed windows, the air becomes stale. The worker starts feeling sluggish, and her color begins to change. The air quality worsens, the worker turns red due to reduced productivity.
The MOX air quality sensor detects the issue and activates ventilation and/or opening the windows. Clean air flows in, improving the environment. The worker turns green again, feeling focused, and productive. We measure CO2 with our ENS190 sensor.  We measure TVOC and eCO2 and from that air quality index AQI-U is derived.

Thermal runaway:
The BCM demo demonstrates an overcharging event of a battery pack while monitoring the gas conditions inside. Our ENS170A gas sensor allows fast and continuous reading of the gas concentration. Upon detecting a change in gas concentration from an overcharging event or battery defect, the charging process can be halted to prevent further damage. If no actions will be taken, the defect rises and the battery will (based on thermal reaction) expand, explode and starts burning. Our gas sensor is able to detect very small gas concentration changes, long before temperature or pressure sensors are able to detect any events.

The demo shows these events based on real time data:
Scenario 1: overcharging process, gas concentration rising, sensor resistance dropping
Scenario 2: safety mechanism: gas presence detected, safety switch activated and charging process as well as thermal runaway stopped.