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nanotimes Companies

11-05 :: May/June 2011

Wastewater Discharge // Monitoring the Wastewater Discharge of Oil Depots

T

he Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA got into business with the Austrian high-tech company

QuantaRed Technologies: The oil and gas giant has opted for a first quantum cascade laser for water quality analysis after a long and intensive evaluation phase. The innovative measuring method was con- vincing because of its preciseness, speed, and cost- efficiency.

The method for determining hydrocarbons in water, developed by QuantaRed Technologies in coopera- tion with the Vienna University of Technology, em- ploys a liquid-liquid extraction step which is followed by absorbance measurement in the region between 1350 to 1500 cm-1

; using mid-IR lasers.

QuantaRed Technologies is a high-tech spin-off company from the Vienna University of Technology. The team started their R&D activities with Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) technology in 1999. It was the first company world-wide to discover the technolo- gical advantages in the measurement of liquids and the industrial potential of this technology. The first intellectual property patent was filed in 2001.

The first product based on this technology is called Eracheck and employs Quantum Cascade Lasers as light source.

The ERACHECK is the ultimate solution for the fast and easy measurement of sub-ppm concentrations of total petroleum hydrocarbons in water and in soil in the lab as well as in the field. The innovative pa- tented measuring technology is based on the highly precise QCL-IR (Quantum Cascade Laser Infra-Red) technology.

http://www.quantared.com http://vimeo.com/13030048 http://www.eralytics.com/en/cms/default.asp