Fugitive Emissions, Liquid Spills and the Ripeness of
Pears
We had an interesting chat over lunch at M Squared
HQ this week about the variety and range of applications of
mid-IR laser spectroscopy in general and our Firefly-IR source in
particular. Some of the things our customers are doing with this
device are really incredible: analysing exhaust from jet engines,
detection of art forgery, forensic analysis in law enforcement,
liquid spill detection and analysis, leak detection in a wide range
of industrial settings, drug discovery, monitoring combustion,
explosives detection, and even a system for monitoring the ripening
of fruit.
The strength of mid-IR over near-IR lies in the
stronger absorption strengths which means that a device can be used
to detect and analyse lower concentrations of a target substance or
else the detection can be conducted at a distance. In this way,
mid-IR enables the development of systems for stand-off detection
or remote detection of dangerous substances at a distance.
Applications for such capability include detecting the presence of
explosive substances or devices or scanning a broad landscape or
large industrial scene for the presence of hydrocarbon spills,
emissions or residues. Environmental safety and environmental
monitoring are key applications.
Our customers are using mid-IR laser spectroscopy in
many innovative solutions across a range of sectors including
defence, academic research, pharmaceutical chemistry, petrochemical
processing and the food and drink industry.
Future areas of great potential include medical
diagnosis through breath analysis, counterfeit pharmaceutical
detection and geographical carbon mapping.