NSF Award
9461499
This Small Business Innovation Research project will demonstrate a novel membrane inlet for cone penetrometers instrumented for chemical detection in soil and groundwater. Cone penetrometers are now used to understand site geology at remediation sites. Cone penetrometers equipped with chemical sensors will reduce site remediation costs by allowing the currently required geophysical stuty to be combined with a chemical survey. This will minimize the number of expensive wells required. Further, chemical analyses, now routinely done in the laboratory at significant expense, will be done in the field. Field engineers will be able to make remediation decisions in real time at minimum cost. Recent efforts to instrument cone penetrometers have used large sophisticated laser systems which send light underground through fiber optic cable and return the signal to the surface for analysis. These systems can cost $250,000. This research will develop a membrane inlet for cone penetrometers which will make it possible to instrument a cone penetrometer with inexpensive, in-situ, chemical vapor sensors with a projected system cost of under $10,000. The phase I objective is to demonstrate a membrane inlet in the laboratory with typical chemicals found in remediation sites. The overall program objective is to built and demonstrate a fully operational cone penetrometer system at two remediation sites.
