Field Chemical Analysis Tool

CyTerra Corporation proposes the development of a new Field Chemical Analysis Tool (FCAT) to meet the increasing chemical analysis needs of a sophisticated and mobile US military force. The key Phase I task will be the development of a re-circulatingair oven that will provide temperature programming for GC columns in an oven fabricated from commodity items for low cost. Any commercially available GC column up to a 30-meters in length will be accommodated by the proposed oven design. The overallsystem is expected to consume 750 watts, weigh 35 lbs and occupy 0.15-m3 volume. The anticipated analysis time is less than 90 seconds, and the overall analytical cycle time (i.e., analysis time + cool-down time) will be less than 10 minutes. This novellow thermal mass heating technology provides the basis for a modular approach to field chemical analysis.In Phase I, a Re-Circ heating oven breadboard will be interfaced to existing SPME and MS detection equipment to validate the FCAT design concept. It is anticipated that FCAT will capable of providing laboratory quality chemical analyses in the field. Theoverall goal of the proposed project is to develop a modular FCAT with configurable sample introduction and detection modules. Taking advantage of years of experience developing field instruments based on fast gas chromatography (GC), CyTerra Corporation proposes the development of a modular FCAT. The anticipated benefits include meeting the field industrial hygiene analysisneeds of a mobile military with a sophisticated chemical analysis tool that has configurable interfaces for both sample introduction and detection. The immediate benefits are providing a compact, low power, high performance chemical analyzer in a packagesuitable to a mobile, fast-deployed military force. A modular instrument design will be the cornerstone of the FCAT such that field operation is simple, field maintenance is infrequent, and set-up time of 15 minutes. Since the low thermal mass ovendesign is universal for all commercial GC columns and the instrument design is modular, there is the potential to meet many environmental, industrial hygiene and national security chemical analysis needs such as water and air quality, explosives, drugs ofabuse or chemical warfare agents. Additionally, since the oven will be fabricated from existing commodity products, the manufacturing cost will be low. The FCAT system controller will be based on existing powerful computer technology making it aversatile standalone tool.