Despite the bleak, unprecedented Covid-19 cloud that descended upon us all in 2020, Enviro Technology Services (ET) has had a memorable and positive year with some fantastic and interesting projects.
The Gloucestershire based supplier of real-time environmental monitoring instrumentation has enjoyed strong sales in all if its core sectors especially UK air quality monitoring, service contracts and scientific and research applications, both at home and overseas.
During the last 10 years of its 37-year history, ET has become more and more involved in sourcing and suppling cutting-edge and next-generation monitoring technology into the atmospheric chemistry, Earth science and environmental science communities. Products now include: high precision greenhouse gas analysers for trace level and soil flux monitoring of CO2, CH4 and N2O; stable isotope analysers for liquid water, water vapour and CO2/N2O; and micro-pulse LIDAR systems that can identify and measure dust and aerosols in a vertical column through the troposphere up to 25 km, in addition to dynamically measuring the height of the planetary boundary layer (PBL), a parameter fundamentally important to the formation and dispersion of air pollution.
Other products include high precision and fast-responding micro-portable instruments that can be deployed from vehicles (or even from drones/UAVs) to detect and measure methane leaks from natural gas pipelines and fracking operations, through to next-generation optical instruments measuring NO2 and NOx without using old-fashioned (but still widely used) principles of operation such as chemiluminescence, which can over-estimate concentrations of NO2.
The firm is especially proud to have recently supplied the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) with a micro-pulse LIDAR system which will be used on one of the UK’s most high-profile scientific research platforms, the RRS Sir David Attenborough. They look forward to sharing a case study once this amazing research vessel begins its research in the Southern Ocean in 2021.
ET is also proud to have supplied the renowned Cyprus Institute’s Unmanned Systems Research Laboratory with the world’s first ABB/LGR HoverGuard off-axis ICOS (integrated cavity output spectroscopy) drone-based greenhouse gas analyser. This sub-2 kg instrument is described as a marvel of instrument miniaturisation and ET says it really does advance the science of ‘mini flying laboratories’, taking them well beyond the realm of simply sensors.
Moving away from UAVs and ships and back to dry land, ET is pleased to have supplied two leading UK cities (Liverpool and Cardiff) with ‘reference method’ air quality monitoring stations in 2020. In Liverpool, ET have supplied five slimline roadside enclosures, each equipped with a Teledyne-API T200 real-time MCERTS certified NOx analyser whilst in Cardiff, an air quality monitoring station complete with two Defra MCERTS approved Met One BAM1020’s (PM10 and PM2.5) as well as a T200 NOx analyser has now been installed in pride of place, right outside Cardiff Castle.
