Chris Anderson, while still editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, talked to a small group of us once about his fascination with drones. He got so involved he quit his job to start a company. Of course, in my day (ancient though it was), we called the RC (or radio controlled) model airplanes.
The technology has developed so quickly that I’ve been amazed there have not been more industrial drone applications. Other than spying, which I’m sure goes on but we don’t talk about.
Aeromon, a Finnish cleantech startup that utilizes its innovative analytics platform and mobile sensors to flexibly map emissions in real-time, successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of drone-mounted platforms for measuring industrial emissions.
Drone Pilot Program
A pilot program at the Ämmässuo waste treatment centre (operated by the Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY, Finland) compared historical data captured using hand-held measurement tools with aerial measurements taken by a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) fitted with Aeromon’s sensor package. The composition and concentration of the biowaste stack and treatment facility emissions were also studied.
The resulting readings closely corresponded with HSY reference results, demonstrating the suitability of Aeromon’s aerial measurement platform for detecting fugitive emissions in a wide range of industrial settings, including those in which measurements may have previously been difficult to obtain.
“When aerially-deployed, our sensor package can create a detailed emissions map of an industrial area. This data can be combined with environmental data in our cloud-based analytics platform Aeromon Cloud Service to provide a complete view of the emissions ,” says Jouko Salo, Chairman of Aeromon.
The agile, accessible nature of the Aeromon platform was appreciated by HSY in particular. “The analysers used in Aeromon’s quadcopter were very portable and seemed reliable. The graphs provided in Aeromon’s final report were informative and easy to understand. We found the results obtained by Aeromon’s quadcopter to be close to our own measurements,” said Roni Järvensivu, Site Environmental Engineer as HSY Ämmässuo.
With the HSY pilot case proving the effectiveness of the Aeromon platform in a real-world industrial setting, Aeromon is well positioned to serve a wide range of industries. “With emissions monitoring legislation tightening across the globe, the need for reliable fugitive emissions detection solutions is increasing,” continues Jouko Salo.
Unlike traditional technologies, the Aeromon platform maps and identifies emissions with cost-effective, lightweight sensors that analyze a wide range of gases, augmented with exact location information and environmental conditions parameters. The ultra-lightweight nature of Aeromon’s analyzer platform means it can be deployed in fixed and hand-held configurations, and can be carried by any drone/RPAS/UAS capable of carrying a professional camera set.
