Small Moisture Analyzer Company Grows With Big Technology

When virtually all the major oil and gas companies can be counted on the client list of one corporation, you can be certain the technology they use for measuring contaminants is crucial. SpectraSensors, a small company in Rancho Cucamonga and a leading manufacturer of optically-based gas and moisture analyzers, has become a major player in the world of measurement with its utilization of NASA technology to give fast and accurate readings which can save gas producers from shut downs that can cost a produce a million dollars a day.

SpectraSensor’s role in measurement has won them the recognition of such prestigious award presenters as Red Herring and Inc. Magazine.

Dale Langham, an expert process analyst and 35-year veteran of the energy industry, and a vice president in the Houston office of SpectraSensors, Inc., says the need for analyzer speed and accuracy has become so paramount that process and energy-related companies around the world are discarding their old gas sensors for precise tunable diode laser (TDL) based analyzers.

“There are two things about this business. We’ve been able to attract people who are world renown and have a local relationship with our customers. And we have a staff of PhD’s that earned that PhD in tunable diode lasers. So when a customer has a problem, we can solve it from a scientific point of view.”

The future of gas and moisture analyzer technology has Langham excited. “Two years ago we weren’t even doing business in refineries, today we are doing moisture analysis, H2S analysis, oxygen analysis, and other measurements. We are making discoveries every day of new measurements we can make.”

The SpectraSensors natural gas analyzer is designed to provide extremely fast and accurate readings without expensive labor and replacement costs. That is because the gas is analyzed away from the stream in a sample cell. As the laser light passes through the gas sample in the cell, the presence of any target gas is detected and its concentration measured.

Langham notes that readings from traditional gas sensors are inherently slow because they rely on diffusion of the sampled gas into the sensor’s detection elements. For instance, a traditional moisture analyzer must slowly dry down before it begins to provide accurate measurements — a process that typically requires 10-12 minutes or more between readings for contaminant-vulnerable quartz crystal and electrochemical sensors.

TDL analyzers provide results in seconds with low maintenance. Moisture and H2S problems are detected with parts-per billion accuracy and measurement intervals as frequently as one second, enabling practically instantaneous response, and thereby eliminating the chance of bad readings, damaged equipment, and false shut-ins.

Langham says a relatively short payback period can be realized on the TDL analyzer in spite of a higher initial purchase price. By eliminating the cost of consumables, extra sensor heads, maintenance labor and other overhead, the savings and ROI mount up quickly. When considering the savings realized, such as by avoiding unnecessary pipeline shut-ins, preventable dehydration costs or pipeline venting — it’s easy to see why overcoming a single event caused by false sensor information would pay for the TDL-based analyzer many times over.

This new moisture analyzer and contaminant detection technology and has taken SpectraSensors into the world of big players in the petrochemical industry. And the big players are lining up.

SpectraSensors, Inc.
Sam Miller
smiller@spectrasensors.com
http://www.spectrasensors.com
Phone: (800) 619-2861
Fax: (909) 948-4142