SBIR-STTR Award

Project Summary: Southwest Sciences proposes to develop test and commercialize a low power compact instrument mounted on a small drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the simultaneous real time detection of the three most important greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide methane and nitrous oxide - emitted from agricultural production sites or any other area where monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions is needed. The compact size low weight and low power specifications make this instrument highly portable so that it can be used not only for airborne measurements but also any environmental measurement application where available power may be limited including land vehicle and stationary ground-based measurements. The use of a drone or small UAV as the transport vehicle for the instrument will greatly reduce the cost of making frequent measurements over agricultural sites or other measurement targets. The Phase I project objectives are to: Construct a laboratory prototype instrument to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.  Extensively characterize the sensitivity and stability of the system in the laboratory and in stationary outdoor measurements.  Test the system in flight using a drone owned by Southwest Sciences. The results of the Phase I project will establish the feasibility of drone-based measurement of the three most important greenhouse gases using two diode lasers and will be the foundation for optimizing the design of the Phase II prototype. Commercial applications exist in agricultural research and agribusiness where monitoring greenhouse gas emissions is needed. The technology also has a connection to agriculturally-related energy efficiency as the monitoring instrumentation could be useful in development of methane capture and utilization technologies. It may be useful in optimizing nitrogen fertilization strategies for best crop production and minimal greenhouse gas emissions and for monitoring emissions from animal production facilities and guiding waste mitigation strategies. In addition to commercial applications in agriculture this technology can be adapted to other gases and platforms for air quality and pollution monitoring in other industrial enterprises or atmospheric research applications.