A Powerful Method for Petroleum Exploration:
Real-time Undersea Mass Spectrometry
December 12, 2006
PRESS RELEASE
Cheswick, PA, December 1, 2006: A unique cycloidal mass spectrometer, called Sea Monitor™, has been developed to explore dissolved hydrocarbon and atmospheric gases at ocean depths to 5,000 meters. The prototype was successfully deployed aboard the Johnson Sea Link (JSL) manned submersible during a recent oceanographic expedition in the Gulf of Mexico.
The JSL is a 4-person submersible certified to operate at depths to 3000 feet. The Sea Monitor™ mass spectrometer was integrated onto the submersible’s external air ballast tanks (Figure 1). The integrated Sea Monitor™ unit underwent 3 dive missions, each lasting between 3 and 4 hours, to the Mississippi Canyon seafloor at 2,900 feet below mean sea level in the Gulf of Mexico (Figure 2). A laptop computer in the forward crew compartment provided digital spectrometer control and real-time data display via a RS-232 link. The Sea Monitor™ system was supplied with 24V DC power from the JSL vehicle batteries...
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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.
