Methane, page-10

I'm a long time silent follower of this board and see huge potential in PSY Lumimems application across a range of technologies.
I have previously worked as a consultant enviro scientist in contaminated sites assessment so understand the practicalities of using field analysers for measurement of soil vapours. The issues with the current crop of analysers and their practical application are as follows;
- None give any real time data that are generally accepted by the NEPM and/or regulations (and therefore regulatory authorities) as a robust assessment tool - generally they only serve a qualitative function to prompt for sampling and then NATA accredited lab analysis (which EPA will accept)
- often you need to take along many analysers for the assessment eg. for assessing soil vapour at a service station site you may need a PID (for benzene), landfill gas analyser (for methane, CO, H2S, O2 etc) and an LEL meter (for safety)
I cant speak for other applications, but for site assessment purposes, the lower limit of detection in current analysers is sufficient (generally in ppm).
An opportunity exists in this application if lumiMEMS makes it possible to develop a one stop multi -gas analyser reducing cost and need to muck around with multiple analysers and calibrations. Probably the greater issue though is that the device needs to be sufficiently accurate and have reproducibility of results (not sensitivity) to satisfy the endorsement of NEPM / regulations such that respective EPAs may allow then to be used as a quantitative measure, thus cutting out the cost and time component of using a lab. I think this is the greater challenge and would take some convincing.
I see greater opportunity in medical point of care where time and sensitivity is critical to success eg.troponin for heart attacks in A&E departments. Anteo Diagnostics (ADO) are currently working to supply protein surface coating to such a device which is still in the development phase. I am confident this wouldn't have the sensor technology to match PSYs lumiMEMS. Sorry for the cross promotion, but to me this seems a great opportunity to provide sensors in such an application (and others) if a collaborative partnership were to be formed between PSY and ADO.