Outdoor as well as indoor air pollution increases the risk for respiratory and other diseases. Air pollution results in several million deaths worldwide per year. Monitoring pollution in combination with measures for its reduction, especially in densely populated metropolitan areas, is therefore an efficient means to improve our lives.

Monitoring of environmental changes has become a particularily important topic during the last decade due to climatic changes induced by global warming. Limiting the warming of the earth atmosphere by CO₂ and CH₄ emissions requires detection and removal of uncontrolled leaks as well as surveillance of intentional outlets of these and other green house gases.

PSS utilizes gas-specific longitudinal single mode lasers (distributed feedback lasers, widely tunable coupled cavity lasers) as well as near and mid IR LEDs for detection of air pollutants and other trace gases including e.g. NH₃, N₂O, CH₂O, C₂H₅OH, C₂H₆, C₃H₈, H₂O, HS, SO₂, O_3, Hydrochlorofluorocarbons …

Due to the small dimensions (laser chip size less than 1 mm³, compact electronics) laser-based sensors can be integrated in compact test stations near emisson hot spots, in hand-held equipment and may also be used airborne in drones, planes etc. Typical sensitivities are in the 1 ppm range.

Furthermore, sensing challenges often occur in INDUSTRIAL OR OTHER PRODUCTION PROCESSES.  Our high-end, customizable sensing systems are ideally suited for trace detection of a variety of components in solids and liquids in numerous industries:  chemical/oil, construction material, food processing, glass and ceramics, agriculture and many more.

Let’s start a dialogue to discuss solutions for your specific applications.