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College of Wooster professor, Georgia Tech engineers to collaborate on design
By Paula Schleis Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Saturday, Nov 03, 2007
Battery-operated sensors that can ''smell'' traces of TNT and other explosives could be mounted on subway cars, in plane cargo holds and near screening lines if research under way at the College of Wooster is successful.
Chemistry professor Paul Edmiston will take a sabbatical next year to work with engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to try to move his unique detector a step closer toward commercialization.
''We're going to work on putting all the pieces together,'' he said. '' . . . We're hoping to have a working design to demonstrate in a couple of years.''
An $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation is helping to fund the effort.
Edmiston came to Wooster 11 years ago to take advantage of one of the top chemistry programs in the country.
As an analytical chemist, his expertise is in measuring things, and he has long worked with sensors for environmental uses, such as detecting pollutants in
water.
''After 9/11, there was an emphasis on detection of explosive devices and funding opportunities available to scientists in that area,'' he said, so he decided to take his sensor technology research in a new direction.
A closer look
Here's how the technology works:
A special glass is formed from a solution that contains molecules shaped like the explosive TNT. Chemicals are then used to remove those molecules, leaving behind tiny pockets — not unlike withdrawing a hand from a plaster cast to create a mold.
When air containing TNT molecules flows over the glass, they are captured in the pockets that only they can fit.
''It doesn't matter if gasoline or obnoxious perfume or any other vapors are next to it. It won't bind if the pocket isn't the right shape,'' Edmiston said.
Quite by accident, Edmiston and his student researchers also found that when TNT molecules bind with the chemicals in the glass sensor, the molecules lose a proton and turn pink.
That gives Edmiston's creation an added level of sensitivity, eliminating the chance of error.
''You don't want to get stopped in an airport and you're innocent,'' he said. ''You don't want any false positives.''
Part of the engineering challenge at Georgia Tech will be to figure out how to get the vapors to the sensor.
''They take ideas and try to build working devices,'' he said of the collaboration.
One possibility is using ultrasonic sound waves to shake material at an invisible level, releasing the vapors into the air. Then a collection system could gently inhale samples of air for testing.
Edmiston said he's trying to apply the same technology to detecting ''TAPT,'' shorthand for an explosive used in the London subway bombings and found in the failed attempt by the so-called ''shoe bomber.''
There are several methods used to detect explosives today.
Despite technological progress, dogs — with their hypersensitive noses — are still the best way to detect explosives, Edmiston said.
Other options include X-ray machines (which can detect only shapes and density of objects); and ion mobility spectrometers (requiring that each item be swiped with a cloth and tested on the device).
''Overall, there still exists a great need to detect explosives, particularly in the vapor state,'' Edmiston said. ''Ideally, these sensor devices would be good enough to find buried land mines.''
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com.
Battery-operated sensors that can ''smell'' traces of TNT and other explosives could be mounted on subway cars, in plane cargo holds and near screening lines if research under way at the College of Wooster is successful.
Get the full article here.
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