SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project focuses on the development of a proof-of-concept ultra-portable CO2 isotope ratio monitor. Carbon isotope ratio monitoring is essential for discerning natural versus anthropogenic emissions sources of CO2. Widespread measurement of differentiated carbon isotopes will provide major steps towards building more accurate models of climate change. However, isotopic ratio monitoring is notoriously difficult, even for the gold standard gas sensors based on mass spectroscopy, which can take up an entire room and require skilled technicians to operate. Phase I will explore the development of sensor components suitable for battery powered, easy-to-use, laser spectroscopic CO2 isotope ratio monitors using novel high-efficiency infrared quantum cascade lasers (QCLs). The broader/commercial impact of this work targets improved atmospheric monitoring, climate change analysis, and carbon capture/sequestration/verification. Carbon sequestration sites will require fine grained leak detection when captured into underground geological features, and isotopic ratio monitoring will allow such detection to be greatly improved. Additionally, data generated by such carbon isotope ratio sensors will answer many critical questions related to the human impact of burning fossil fuels.

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a robust, ultra-portable CO2 isotope ratio sensor. Typically, portable sensors cannot provide good sensitivity and accuracy. Sensors which do provide adequate sensitivity and accuracy are bulky, power hungry, high maintenance, and require a controlled operational environment. This is especially true for existing CO2 13/12C isotope ratio sensors, which require hundreds of watts of power. Portable 13/12C sensors are critical to enable new applications including remote sensor network CO2 sequestration monitoring, environmental carbon cycle measurements, and medical breath analysis. Novel technology using quantum cascade lasers and the latest compact optical cells can provide a compact, power efficient, sensitive, and accurate sensor platform for gas sensing. The research objectives for this project aim to break the tradeoff between power consumption, sensitivity, complexity, and size. This project targets the development of a robust, field-deployable, outdoor sensor, and verifies its performance against existing methods of measuring CO2 isotope ratio. The realization of the final product will deliver a portable 13/12C isotope ratio laser spectrometer that operates in harsh environments using less than 15 Watts of power. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project deals with enhancing environmental monitoring by: 1) Enabling more precise measurements of carbon sources and sinks to improve climate science; 2) Providing a map of real-time carbon emission which is useful for research, policy, and education; 3) Providing real-time, long-term remote carbon measurements for carbon trading markets; 4) Enabling extremely sensitive leak detection of CO2 in carbon capture and sequestration applications without the significant cost of mobile laboratory infrastructure. A more powerful set of gas sensors such as the ones developed through this project will dramatically lower the great expense currently required to precisely monitor greenhouse gases and air pollution, a critical global concern. Data generated by such carbon isotope ratio sensors will answer many critical questions related to the human impact of burning fossil fuels on the environment. These types of sensors will also simultaneously impact industrial and medical fields, providing new solutions for industrial process control and safety, and portable real-time medical breath analyzers.