Daylight Solutions believes that there are numerous applications for a compact, battery powered, low cost sensor that can detect trace gases (parts-per-billion and below) within a mixture of other gases. Applications exist within the DOD, DHS, first responder, and forensic communities for the detection of harmful/lethal gases, explosives, illicit drugs, and a variety of other agents. The portability and sensitivity of this system, along with the instrument's ability to discriminate between target agents and other atmospheric gases, would greatly reduce the false-positive warnings inherent to most current detection schemes, and could provide an early-warning of target gases before they reach dangerous levels. Such low powered sensors could also be dispersed throughout a wide area to create an autonomous environmental monitoring network to measure green house gases. In medical diagnostics, trace gases present in exhaled human breath can be mapped to specific diseases and used to monitor the effectiveness of treatment. The detection of very low concentrations of gases would greatly increase process control and contamination monitoring in industrial applications. The device proposed under this SBIR could also provide a low cost method for individuals to monitor their exposure to hazardous materials where wide area monitoring is not possible.
Compact sensors based on ECqcLTM and QEPAS technology for the trace detection of atmospheric gases are of interest to several NASA centers, such as Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and collaborating groups of NCAR and NOAA. CO2, CH4, N2O and O3 are primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, but also in other planetary atmospheres. The proposed sensor technology will not only serve to augment existing non-laser instrumentation, but also to study the feasibility and implementation of new innovative techniques with the precision and accuracy necessary for in-situ measurements and remote sensing of Earth and other planetary atmospheres as indicated in this subtopic, as well as subtopic S1.09: In Situ Sensors and Sensor Systems for Planetary Science. Another important NASA application is to detect, monitor and quantify the reactive intermediate formaldehyde (H2CO), which is one of the most abundant gas phase carbonyl compounds in the atmosphere and has been of interest to atmospheric scientists for many years. This gas is formed in the atmosphere from the oxidation of most anthropogenic and biogenic hydrocarbons. Formaldehyde is also directly emitted into the atmosphere from biomass burning, incomplete combustion, industrial emissions, and by emissions from vegetation. Typical atmospheric mixing ratios vary from ~1 ppbv to several 10s of ppbv for polluted air over urban regions and air influenced by petrochemical refinery emissions.
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