Jane Edwards
A team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder that worked on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Spectral Combs from UV to Thz program spun off a small business, LongPath Technologies, to bring to market a methane detection technology using optical frequency combs.
“LongPath now offers commercial products to oil and gas companies to detect methane leaks in real-time, which protects the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improves overall efficiency in the energy production process,” Anne Fischer, program manager at DARPA’s defense sciences office and SCOUT program manager, said in a statement published Thursday.
“Commercialization of the technology also drives down price, making it more cost-effective for DoD to purchase the devices for defense applications such as ultra-secure communications, high-precision navigation, and extended standoff detection of deadly chemical and biological agents,” Fischer added.
The SCOUT program seeks to develop compact optical spectroscopy devices to facilitate rapid detection of trace chemicals in complex environments. The program started in 2014 and ended in 2020.
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has awarded LongPath $5 million in additional funding to scale up its SCOUT technology-based system designed to continuously monitor and detect methane emissions in oil and gas fields. LongPath’s platform was able to mitigate 43 million cubic feet of methane leaks over a period of six months during a recent test.
The company plans to field an additional 25 dual frequency comb systems to detect methane emissions in real time across more than 600 square miles of the Permian Basin in the southwestern U.S.
