Detecting Airborne Threats
17 June 2008, 16:57
Categories: sensors
A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and engineers is developing a universal detection system that can monitor the air for virtually all of the major threat agents—and of course they also point out that it could be used to detect threats from terrorists. In their latest advance, the team has conceptually shown that they can almost simultaneously detect four potential threat materials: biological, chemical, explosives and radiological.
Their work, using a system called Single-Particle Aerosol Mass Spectrometry, or SPAMS, is described in the June 15 edition of Analytical Chemistry. “We believe SPAMS is the only detection instrument that can autonomously detect multiple types of threat agents and trigger alarms within less than a minute,” said Matthias Frank, an LLNL physicist and one of the paper’s co-authors.
Posted by: The Editors
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