Explosives Detection Personnel Portal with IMS Detection

Success Stories--Sandia National Labs

April / May 2005 Volume 3 Number 2

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For the difficult problem of detecting trace explosives on people, Sandia used a systems approach to integrate sample collection and preconcentration, detection and operator notification. The resulting Explosives Detection Personnel Portal, a walk-through system for rapid screening for trace amounts of explosives, was selected as a winner of the Federal Laboratory Consortium's 2005 Excellence in Technology Transfer Awards.

The portal uses a Sandia-patented air-flow design and large-volume preconcentration technique to capture trace explosives. Unlike bulk explosives detection technology, which looks for the actual bomb, trace detection looks for bomb indicators—€”traces of contamination on the person who has handled the explosives. Sandia's technology transfer recipient was originally Barringer Instruments, Inc., a company that specialized in security tools, especially explosives detection, via its desktop detector, the IONSCAN. Commercialization began under Barringer's lead and continued after Barringer's acquisition by Smiths Detection.

The portal looks like an oversized airport metal detector with vents and nozzles on its inside walls and ceiling. People are directed to walk into the portal and then wait for a few seconds as the portal passes puffs of air over them to dislodge particles from their hair, clothes, skin and shoes. The portal's blower draws in about 300 liters of air per second, which carries explosives' vapors and particles, to the preconcentrator where it is collected. Explosives' molecules tend to be "sticky," which helps them adhere within the preconcentrator. Heating the preconcentrator "boils off" the explosives into a gas phase, which is then delivered to the Smiths Detection IONSCAN ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) detector. The IMS is programmed to recognize the chemical signatures for a variety of explosives. The portal system is sensitive enough that even a minute amount of explosive residue on a person will result in an alarm displayed on an adjacent computer screen.

To help understand the large volumes of air and minute quantities of explosives detected in this process, Sandia project leader Kevin Linker says, "Imagine that you have the equivalent of 1 milligram of aspirin dissolved in an Olympic-sized swimming pool that holds one million gallons of water. That's 30 parts of aspirin per a quadrillion parts of water [a quadrillion is 1015]. Not only can we find that explosive equivalent amount of aspirin, we can tell you the color of the aspirin."

Smiths Detection's walk-through portal, known now as the SENTINEL, is noninvasive; it does not require direct contact, nor does it require people to remove their shoes or outer garments. It can screen approximately 420 people per hour and is being used in facilities such as airports, office buildings, sports arenas, prisons, nuclear facilities, prisons, courtrooms, post offices, federal buildings, schools, and other high-traffic areas.

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To See What Has Not Been Seen Before

Providence Technologies, Inc., of Roswell, N.M., has been a technology-development partner with Sandia through the New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program since that program's inception. Providence and Focus Energy Corporation, its new spinoff, are small companies in the upstream oil and gas 3-D geophysical imaging business. Their goal is to see what has not been seen before in the subsurface, creating significant economic value for their customers, investors and company. They concentrate on difficult imaging problems that bring to market otherwise bypassed opportunities in high-potential hydrocarbon regions.

Providence fields teams of 3-D seismic imaging specialists, contractors and operators from Texas to Yemen, helping develop new prospects for drilling, both in the wildcat and producing-field areas. Providence has brought its imaging technology development needs and ideas to Sandia through the small business technical assistance program and through a funds-in Work For Others agreement.
The current collaboration focuses on developing imaging applications not available today that will address a critical, strategic and timely need. The new company, Focus Energy, will look for bypassed oil and gas between producing wells in major U.S. fields. In its target geology, Focus is looking at 5 billion barrels of bypassed oil, which is five times the size of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The project is developing outside-the-box solutions to the oil and gas industry's universal seismic bandwidth barrier, which limits the ability to resolve smaller but potentially lucrative targets beneath the surface. While there are some excellent technologies for this in the world's easier sandstone reservoirs, Focus will work on the world's more complex, heterogeneous, randomly behaved carbonate reservoirs.

Today, Focus Energy has arrived at a significant milestone, the point of technical and field proof-of-concept on the basis of hard data, justifying startup of a new $6.5 million privately funded Roswell technology venture. The business plan lists the hiring of 12 highly compensated scientists, engineers and support personnel to execute the five-year technology implementation plan, creating new high-tech jobs in rural New Mexico. The successful outcome of this phase will probably lead to a merger/acquisition of the venture by a major company during this period.

Providence president Jim Manatt says "Sandia's world-class expertise, talent, intellect, and skill is simply otherwise not remotely available to our company here in New Mexico. Even if it were, we would never be able to afford the cost. When our customers start wondering who in the heck these Providence/Focus guys from Roswell are, the door to credibility opens wide when we explain our technology-development relationships with Sandia National Laboratories."

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An Imaginative Software Licensing Program

Jess, the Rule Engine for the Java platform, is a tool for building a type of intelligent software called an expert system, a set of rules that can be repeatedly applied to a collection of facts to create software solutions to diverse and vaguely defined problems. In traditional computer programming, the programmer instructs the computer precisely, one step at a time, and the computer then solves the problem that is implicit in this description. Jess is a declarative programming environment that lets the programmer describe the problem explicitly; Jess then decides what steps to follow to reach a solution.
This makes Jess an excellent tool for solving difficult or ill-defined problems.

The technology transfer model for dissemination of Jess software was designed by Craig Smith at Sandia's California site. Beginning in 2001, Smith, collaborating with Ernest Friedman-Hill, the author of Jess, created a series of licensing models designed to satisfy all end-users with varying needs and requirements, while achieving rapid deployment and accessibility of the Jess source code. The standardized, but tailor-made, license models now serve as the foundation of this technology transfer effort, offering ease of availability and efficient and consistent support of the software. Response times to all licensing, technology transfer, and technical inquiries (averaging 25-40 per day) are typically less than one business day.

The teaming efforts of technical and business development personnel combined to leverage this critical response time element. A company wanting to integrate Jess into their operating systems or applications can do so within days, perhaps even the same day. Companies requiring implementation or specialized technical support receive an equally rapid response. This is a critical aspect in the transfer of this technology, as the efficient and responsive reputation for Jess is a major attraction for new licensees.

Jess has been licensed for use by local, state, and federal government agencies, academic laboratories, classrooms, and public organizations and private commercial entities from small startups to Fortune 50 companies. The source code is available to licensees, making Jess an attractive choice where security, mission criticality or customization are paramount. Licensed users of Jess are entitled to keep rights to derivatives; however, improvements to the code are typically offered back to the Jess Users group under Users Contributions on the Jess web site.

Improvements in commercializing this technology are also continuous and ongoing. A business model to port Jess to Microsoft's NET platform is in progress. An improved multifaceted model for Jess training is currently under development with a small specialized technical solutions firm that will result in Sandia's ability to offer customized and tailored training modules for every specific requirement of the Jess licensee. Dozens of new startup companies have integrated Jess into their initial product offering.

All Sandia vignettes were written by Margaret Lovell, a senior technical writer at Technically Write, assigned to Sandia National Laboratories.