Picarro Launches New Isotopic Water Vapor Analyzer

    SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Picarro, Inc. has introduced
 a unique gas analyzer to precisely measure oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in
 water vapor, important markers used in source of origin monitoring, and
 water cycle and climate studies. This new analyzer fills a previously unmet
 need for continuous, in situ, moisture and isotopic ratio measurements.
 
     Since it can be deployed in the field as well as the laboratory, the
 Picarro Isotopic water vapor analyzer will be key in environmental studies
 such as understanding the global water cycle. For this application, this
 analyzer eliminates the need for flask sampling and enables fast,
 continuous, on-site isotopic measurements which simply cannot be done with
 larger, costlier IR-MS systems.
 
     Industrial applications include pinpointing sources of moisture
 contamination in manufacturing processes and accurately measuring the point
 of origin of foods, beverages and pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, the
 analyzer reports precise total moisture concentration measurements in
 addition to isotope concentration.
 
     "Isotopes are notoriously difficult to measure because of the
 complexity and cost of legacy techniques like magnetic sector mass
 spectrometers," said Michael Woelk, President and CEO of Picarro. "The
 Picarro Isotopic Water Vapor Analyzer is a huge step in simplifying and
 cost reducing isotopic measurements for scientists and engineers regardless
 of skill level, point-of-measurement or budget". Based on a new, compact
 platform, the analyzer measures single spectral features in a flow cell
 with an effective path length of up to 12 kilometers resulting in increased
 sensitivity, selectivity, precision, and data quality. Its high resolution
 and resulting specificity enable it to discriminate between closely spaced
 spectral lines arising from different isotopic compositions in the sample
 gas. The analyzer is exceptionally rugged, offers extremely low drift, is
 basically maintenance free, and requires no consumables, thereby offering
 users significant ease of use and cost of ownership benefits.
 
     Recently, stable isotope techniques have been used to enhance
 micrometeorological studies of the biosphere-atmosphere exchange processes
 in ecosystems. They are increasingly being used to address challenging
 problems such as identifying the primary components of net carbon and water
 fluxes to help evaluate their response to climate variations and land use
 change. The ability to detect equatorial to polar regional variations of
 these isotopic markers further enables studies to understand climate change
 through time.
 
     The analyzer is based on the company's exclusive implementation of
 cavity ring down spectroscopy (CRDS) technology, originally developed at
 Stanford University and licensed in 1999 to Picarro, where it has been
 further developed and commercialized.
 
     Picarro, Inc. is a privately held company dedicated to developing
 instrumentation for the precise measurement and identification of specific
 molecules of interest to environmental and atmospheric scientists,
 geophysicists, and others monitoring the effects of global warming and
 change. The company is a leader in cavity ring down spectroscopy (CDRS)
 technology
 
     with eight exclusive licenses to Stanford University patents and nine
 of its own on CDRS extensions. Visit us at http://www.picarro.com.
 
     Contact:
 
     Aaron Van Pelt, Marketing Engineer
 
     (408-962-3919)
 
 
 

SOURCE Picarro, Inc.