Highly Efficient Portable Trace Explosives Sampling System

The transportation system is an attractive target for terrorists because it could allow them to cause immediate harm to large numbers of people and create anxiety for many more. The detection and mitigation of attacks on transportation are made more difficult by the transient nature of the passengers and the fact that passengers often carry a lot of luggage. X-ray machines and computer tomography-based systems currently deployed by TSA operators provide only imagery of the density of items within screened luggage. Detection based on density images is insufficient because many non-hazardous items have densities similar to explosive materials. In spite of being highly sensitive, currently used explosives detectors are only as good as the samples they are presented with. Currently trace extraction is done by manual swabbing, which suffers from severe constraints. The process is time and labor intensive, and it also lacks consistency of inspection. To address the issues of effective sampling Lynntech proposes to develop a highly efficient portable sampling system that will allow captured explosive particles and vapor to be thermally desorbed for detection by a commercial explosive detector. It will be useful in screening people, baggage, parcels, cargo, improvised explosive devices, etc.