The commercial applications of the proposed sensor include greenhouse gas monitoring for geophysical research and emissions compliance, hydrocarbon leak detection, and a variety of industrial process control venues. The proposed LPAS system can be applied for many other trace gas measurements and environmental monitoring and will have numerous markets. Besides the environmental and industrial application, many other military applications including detection of Chemical warfare Agent (CWA), explosives, TICs, can make use of the devices developed in this project. Potential customers are the NOAA or EPA for environmental monitoring, DoD for detection of IED (JIEDDO), the DHS for detection of explosives and scanning of luggage (TSA), etc.
NASA Applications for this instrument include the global atmospheric monitoring of trace species. Being insensitive to varying background conditions, LPAS sensors are well suited for water vapor measurement, sensing troposphere and lower stratosphere gases such as CO2, CO2 isotopes, CO, CH4, O3, NO2, NOx and N2O, etc. This compact, low-cost, accurate, and highly reliable trace gas sensor could be configured for ground or aircraft. LPAS sensor will be capable of not only accurately measuring ambient levels but will be capable of detecting specific sources in the indoor environment. Candidate NASA missions include MOPITT (Measurement Of Pollution In The Troposphere), ASCENDS, (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days and Seasons), GACM (Global Atmospheric Composition Mission), and Geo-CAPE (Geostationary Coastal Air Pollution Events), etc.
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