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New device will allow bottled water through airport security
A range of new high-tech bottle-scanning technologies which will enable the lifting of the liquids ban at airports are currently being trialled in several countries and UK based Cobalt Light Systems’ explosives detector has just passed all its European civil aviation security tests.
The rule banning bottles larger than 10cl being carried through security and onto aircraft was introduced in 2006 following the failed attempt by 17 would-be terrorists who conspired to carry hydrogen peroxide-based liquid explosives onto aircraft in the UK.
The breakthrough, which will enable the lifting of the ban, is to assess the contents of any size of bottle without opening it. Cobalt Light Systems’ Insight100 desktop container screening device is similar in size to a domestic microwave oven and uses a near-infrared laser to interrogate the liquid, powder or gel molecules in a bottle and reveal their chemistry.
The technique, called spatially offset raman spectroscopy, shines the near-infrared laser into the bottle at a number of points. A small proportion of the light reflected back at each point is shifted in wavelength by the energy levels in the liquid molecules, and this small shift reveals what the substance is. Within five seconds of placing a bottle in the machine, a simple readout says: ‘water’, ‘marmite’ or ‘hydrogen peroxide’ with an appropriate on screen ‘Clear’ or ‘Alarm’ message.
“Crucially, Cobalt’s newly-approved technology has a low rate of false alarms – it gives less than 0.5% false positives – and reveals the seemingly innocent precursor chemicals that could be mixed inflight to create a potent explosive,” said Cobalt Light Systems CEO Paul Leoffen.
Source: Cobalt Light Systems
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