Project Description

The global gas sensing market was estimated at USD 1.78 billion in 2013 and is projected to be worth USD 2.32 billion by 2018. Gas sensing has relevant applications in sectors such as oil and gas, building and construction, food processing, healthcare and water treatment. There is a gap in the market for low-cost, small-sized, low-power and highly portable remote gas detection system.
This technical feasibility project, lead by M Squared Lasers Ltd, will investigate the gas detection performance capabilities of the prototype Single-Pixel Camera (SPC) in an industrial setting. The project will enable testing of the single pixel camera combined with M Squared Lasers’ tunable mid-IR laser to form an active hyper-spectral imager system. Its sensitivity will be tested at different gas/air concentrations (down to less than 1000 ppm) and at extended distances (up to 10m).
The concept uses a telecoms laser diode to illuminate a scene at 1.65μm, exactly the wavelength corresponding to the absorption of methane gas. This image of the methane cloud is overlaid upon a high resolution RGB image of the overall scene, giving a composite full colour image where the methane appears as a red cloud.
The prototype camera has already demonstrated pure methane detection in a laboratory setting. Our challenge for the next stage of the project will be to increase the sensitivity of the system so that its operational range can be increased to 3 metres or more.

Project Details

• Demonstrator: Gas Sight
• Capabilities: Gas imaging
• Home: quantic.ac.uk