Picarro picks up prize for r&d

Picarro does this:

“Picarro’s ultra-trace gas analyzers are designed to maximize the advantages of Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopy (CRDS), delivering ppt to ppb sensitivity at high speed and without interference to meet the requirements of the most demanding applications.

“The ultra-trace gas analyzer is a flexible product platform enabling a wide range of applications including atmospheric inversion and flux measurements of greenhouse gases, real-time emissions analysis, process control optimization in petrochemical plants, and trace impurities monitoring in ultra-high purity gases.”

And for that they won an R&D 100 award, which recognizes the “most technologically significant new products and processes of the year” in applications as diverse as environmental, life sciences, pharma, metrology, semiconductor and nanotechnology.

Well done Picarro.  They say:

“Tracking isotope ratios has long been recognized as a powerful tool in a wide range of scientific disciplines, but the practical limitations and high cost of obtaining this data has previously limited its use to just a few applications. This new instrument now makes this data incredibly accessible,” notes Eric Crosson, Picarro CTO. “For example, we are particularly excited about the ability to simultaneously quantify CO2 levels in situ, and to identify their sources, since we believe this will be a critical aspect of managing greenhouse gas levels, all the way from sources to sinks.”