Public Funding for Mirico LTD.

High accuracy analysis of gas emissions at low concentrations is required for several industries from a regulatory, quality assurance, process improvement and environmental perspective. Precision instrumentation developed to date require high maintenance, has limited operating ranges and fragile nature of instrumentation. There is currently a particular limitation for ammonia (NH3) measurements. Laser dispersion spectroscopy (LDS) chemical detection method is a novel patented technique that can meet demands of industry. This project will provide MIRICO with its core instrument's performance characteristics and validation in near-real life scenarios and extend capabilities at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to fulfil these goals. The outcome will result in a dramatic reduction in time to market for MIRICO's products, increase market adaptability of MIRICO's innovation, impact on design & manufacturing of our analyser which all equates to significant savings that would otherwise be out of reach for MIRICO. LDS will establish a new class of instrumentation, offering for the first time a real time accurate analyser, which is immune to dirty environments, can measure a broad range of pollutant concentrations, and offer high stability even in highly turbid atmospheres making it ideal for remote detection and analysis of NH3\. The development will lead to a pre-production system for emissions monitoring in an industrial environment. Project elements include all aspects on instrument development, integration, testing & validation.

Mirico has developed unique patented open path Laser Dispersion Spectroscopy (LDS) technology, which is packaged into a sensor that can measure emissions of planet-harming gases across wide areas (1km2+) at very high sensitivity (parts per billion). This is currently used by the scientific research community to explore emissions from agriculture and wetlands to understand large-scale environmental change. We are diversifying into new markets and have identified a significant opportunity to monitor emissions from industrial infrastructure using the same sensor. Our initial target is methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which is causing approx. one quarter of global warming. Fossil energy, landfill, wastewater and biogas facilities are responsible for c.40% of human methane emissions and have recently become subject to intense scrutiny. They need to monitor and mitigate emissions to show regulatory compliance, address stakeholder pressure and avoid fines. We have identified the KPIs needed by our potential customers: 1\. Detect leaks down to low levels; 2\. Quantify the level of emissions; 3\. Localise the source of emissions to within an equipment group in a facility; 4\. Catch multiple intermittent events as they happen. We are already working closely with energy companies to validate these requirements, and are confident that with this performance Mirico would out-compete most alternative solutions and unlock a market with TAM \>£12Bn (source: Bloomberg NEF). Mirico has focussed to date on the challenges of LDS sensing technology and associated hardware development, and has only recently started developing digital analytics capability. SENTINEL will greatly accelerate the development of algorithms which can process raw sensor output in the cloud, and characterise methane releases at a facility on a continuous basis. The project will operate at the interface between hardware and software, applying advanced statistical and computing techniques to significantly improve the analysis of the data from our unique open path integration sensor. The overall aim is to provide value-added insights which enable local operations staff to understand the evolving picture of their emissions and take appropriate actions without needing to be upskilled in the underlying physics.

Mirico has unique Laser Dispersion Spectrometry (LDS) technology which accurately measures greenhouse gas emissions across wide areas, with extremely high sensitivity and in all weathers. We have recently developed an LDS-based solution for monitoring of methane emissions from the energy sector, so companies can modify operations and make repairs to minimise releases from their infrastructure. A successfully completed Farming Innovation Pathway feasibility study showed that the technology was highly suitable for use in agricultural environments, extending the measurement capability to include nitrous oxide. The outcome of the project highlighted the area for development was in interpretation of the data to generate insight for farmers. This project will develop and validate algorithms for interpreting GHG measurements from agricultural sources. Both nitrous oxide and methane are very difficult to measure accurately under real farm conditions and at scale, resulting in an" information gap" for use by all stakeholders. Both farmers and government need reliable data to understand where emissions are coming from and how to mitigate them. We will develop and validate our digital solution to make it fit-for-purpose for farmers, and the wider food supply chain, providing them with usable, actionable data. The expected outcome is a first-of-a-kind farming emissions monitoring service which can be rapidly rolled out. The benefits to farmers will be: * Understand their real emissions and where they are from. * Formulate fact-based action plans to tackle them through decision support. * A consistent measurement approach for the whole sector

This project will focus on developing a novel solution to the challenge of managing greenhouse gas emissions in the UK farming sector. It will demonstrate the application of MIRICO Ltd's ORION gas sensor which can be used to measure emissions of greenhouse gases from farming activities, including methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. This exciting new technology will enable on-farm research into strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of farming and may eventually be deployed for use in commercial situations to monitor emissions for real-time decision making.

no public description

The drive towards cleaner energy resources and energy security policies is promoting the development of a wider range of oil and gas reserves, such as fracking, in very remote locations. However, the loss of methane gas which is associated with these energy resources has a potent greenhouse impact on the environment that is far worse than carbon dioxide, which has been given much attention in recent years. To reduce the loss of methane into the environment from the equipment used in oil and gas extraction it is necessary to have an effective leak monitoring system to enable operators to spot leaks as they arise and take rapid action to fix them to minimise the release of methane into the atmosphere. Present methods of leak monitoring rely on a tedious, resource intensive manual process of sending an engineer to site with a hand held gas leak detector. This is particularly problematic when monitoring a very remote location, which is increasingly the case for newly developed oil and gas reserves. The use of laser beams from an autonomous system to scan a wide area has proven be an effective method for detecting gas leaks in oil and gas facilities, as it has the required sensitivity to detect small leaks and locate them precisely. Compared to current methods of manual surveying such "open path" laser instruments provide continuous 24/7 monitoring which enables much faster and efficient response to repairing gas leaks than would otherwise be possible. If these are not detected they could continue unabated until the next survey, which may be as infrequent as an annual basis for some sites. It also allows the methane mass emission rates to be continuously monitored, which is necessary to support the implementation of legislation to regulate greenhouse emissions from such oil and gas sites. The same laser technology can be applied to other sources of greenhouse gas emissions such as landfill and agricultural sites. Despite the great potential of this laser technology it is not yet suitable for long term unsupervised deployment in remote locations. The barriers to this for commercially available open path laser instruments are the high electrical power requirement, instrument size, and reliability of the laser beam alignment. MIRICO's LOLIPOP project is designed to address these limitations by developing the technology to enable a low power, easier to deploy instrument to be developed for commercial use in these applications

"With growing concerns on environmental pollution and its adverse impact on human health, it has become increasingly important to measure and control industrial processes, reduce emissions from fossil fuel power plants and better understand the ambient air quality around us. To date, however, precision instrumentation capable of high sensitivity and accurate concentration measurements tends to be manual, cumbersome to use, requires continuous calibration and maintenance and is often limited to use in controlled environments. MIRICO's Laser Dispersion Spectroscopy technology is a revolutionary approach for highly sensitive remote measurements of gases, offering high versatility and enabling new approaches to emission monitoring that provide more realistic, robust and reliable data on emission sources. In collaboration with NPL, MIRICO will test this new spectroscopic technique, utilising NPL's state of the art facilities to demonstrate the technology's superior performance in demanding industrial environments. The resulting technology will provide the potential to improve environmental monitoring efforts, enhance product yields in industrial processes and provide policy makers with the tools to reduce emissions of pollutants and enhance the ambient air quality to mitigate the impact on human health."

Awaiting Public Project Summary

With growing concerns on environmental pollution and its adverse impact on human health, it has become increasingly important to measure and control industrial processes, reduce emissions from fossil fuel power plants, and better understand the ambient air quality around us. To date, precision instrumentation capable of high sensitivity and accurate concentration measurements are cumbersome to use, require continuous calibration and maintenance, and often limited to use in controlled environments. MIRICO’s Laser Dispersion Spectroscopy technology is a revolutionary approach for highly sensitive measurements of gases, offering high versatility and enabling new approaches to emission monitoring that provides more realistic, robust and reliable data of emission sources. In collaboration with NPL, MIRICO will test this new spectroscopic technique, utilising NPL’s state of the art facilities to demonstrate the technologies superior performance in demanding environments. The resulting technology will improve environmental measurements, enhance product yields in industrial processes, and provide policy makers with the tools to reduce emissions of pollutants and enhance the ambient air quality to mitigate the impact on human health.

MIRICO is developing a highly innovative instrument that was originally intend for use in space missions, to measure atmospheric profiles on planets such as Mars. The instrument design offers laboratory performance in a compact simple operation instrument. This project is the first step towards developing the instrument for point of care diagnosis of severe infections in hospitals, the analyser will measure human breath content to identify the onset of a severe infection in critically ill patients with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes, saving lives and reducing costs in healthcare organisations. The instrument will be developed and tested for a range of gas mixtures to mimic real life human breath scenarios, a step before using it for animal and human clinical studies