Recently a group of 15 students and four faculty members of IIT Bombay has developed an electronic device for the detection of explosives like RDX and ENT, which is named as Enose.
it can be used best for the security purpose at public places like airport, railway stations and the best thing about it is that it is very low price.
V ramgopal rao who is leading the team and is professor of electrical engineering at IIT Bombay said that “The eNose is a nano tech-based electro-mechanical device with specific coatings on its surface.There are minute cantilevers on the surface, its total length equivalent to the decimetre of a strand of human hair. These cantilevers act as sensors and the nano-molecules present in the cantilevers bind to the vapours of explosives, thereby detecting the presence of the same.”
Pic5he also said in one of his talks that such a device could cost as low as `5,000, while current security tools that executed the same task cost upwards of `15 lakh. After the technology developed at IIT-Bombay was transferred to NanoSniff Technologies, one of the firms that will manufacture it, research was now on developing an ‘X-niff’, which is a prototype that can differentiate between explosives and non-explosives. In the future, such devices could be placed at different locations, like CCTVs, as a precautionary tool and security measure against the use of explosives.
The pattern recognition of various kinds of explosives like RDX and ENT is conducted using algorithms. More the variety and number of surface coatings, more efficient is the device in responding to different types of explosives and detecting them. The device is designed in such a way that it can function exactly like a human or an animal nose. It’s fitted with a pump that inhales and exhales the surrounding air.
(Content was first published here)