Chemical analyzer hits the road. (Tech Talk).SensIR Technologies, of Danbury, Conn., has developed a compact, portable chemical analyzer, called the TravelIR. Alan Rein, the company's vice president, explained that, after a chemical spill chemical spill Public health An inadvertent release of a liquid chemical regarded as hazardous to human health which in a workplace is identified with hazardous materials labels. See Material Safety Data Sheets. , the analyzer can take a sample of the material and match it to an internal database of thousands of compounds. If it finds a match, the identity is displayed. Current users include the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Drug Enforcement Agency; Agriculture Department; Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory, research center, based in Argonne, Ill., 27 mi (43 km) SW of downtown Chicago, with other facilities at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, 50 mi (80 km) W of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Founded in 1946 by the U.S. ; Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) is a United States Army facility located near Aberdeen, Maryland (in Harford County). The Army's oldest active proving ground, it was established on October 20, 1917, six months after the United States entered World War I. , and U.S. and Canadian Customs. The TravelIR uses mid-infrared spectroscopy to cover the "fingerprint" region of the electromagnetic spectrum electromagnetic spectrum Total range of frequencies or wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. The spectrum ranges from waves of long wavelength (low frequency) to those of short wavelength (high frequency); it comprises, in order of increasing frequency (or decreasing , Rein explained. It is called the fingerprint, because the information provided is highly specific to the structure of a compound. |
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