Presented in the present paper is a compact instrument developed for rapid, sensitive and continuous monitoring of trace gases in air, with results shown for carbon monoxide concentration. This instrument takes advantage of recent technology in mid-infrared quantum cascaded laser (QCL) operating at 48 μm and mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe) mid-infrared (MIR) detector, combing MIR multipass herriott cell with 76 m absorption path length to obtain low detection sensitivity down to 50 nmol·mol-1 level in 4 s acquisition time. Meanwhile, in order to eliminate the instability induced by electrically modulated light source and effectively improve detection limit of the instrument, an optical structure with dual channel path was designed which is based on differential optical absorption spectroscopy method. The experimental results show that the instrument integrated with gas concentration inversion algorithm can be applied to in-situ measurements of trace gases without calibration. Additionally, operator could substitute a QCL operating at a different wavelength to measure other gases.