Featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Data mining down under the ocean
May 23, 2005by Byron Spice
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...Camilli is developing chemical sensors that might be part of such an instrument array. In particular, he is working with a Cheswick firm, Monitor Instruments Co., to build a submersible version of a mass spectrometer, a widely used and powerful tool for identifying chemicals.
Called the Tethered Yearlong Spectrometer, or Sea Monitor™, it could operate for months on its own, checking for dissolved chemicals released from the seafloor, for biological chemicals that might reflect the health of deep sea life and for environmental pollutants.
Long-term monitoring with "mass spec" might help resolve the fate of methane released from methane hydrates, ice-like deposits in the seafloor. No one knows if this methane dissolves or ultimately reaches the surface, where it can join other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"The nice thing about a mass spectrometer is that, rather than measuring only one parameter, it can measure a bunch of chemicals simultaneously," said Camilli, who designed a mass spectrometer for a robotic submarine as his doctoral project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
» Read the complete article at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
About Monitor Instruments
Monitor Instruments Company LLC was founded in 1992 as the Monitor Group, to develop chemical analysis instrumentation for emerging requirements in laboratory, industrial, biomedical and field portable applications. There was, and continues to be, a growing unfilled need for smaller, faster, reliable and economically priced instruments with high-end performance. Mass spectrometry – specifically cycloidal designs - was identified as the technology most likely to satisfy this emerging market need.
The initial research and development program was focused on linear cycloidal technology. The intent was to miniaturize this design while maintaining the performance characteristics needed by the market. This effort produced a patented miniature ionizer and ion optics design, which was incorporated in prototype instruments used in field testing. Lessons learned in this extensive four-year field test and evaluation program were continuously incorporated in both hardware and software. The result was the field tested Series 3000 cycloidal mass spectrometers.
