Patent ID: 6627878
Filing Date: 2003-09-30
Classification: G01N,H01J

Abstract:
A system for sampling the ambient of a selected environment for the presence of predetermined chemical vapors therein, the system comprising:(a) means for obtaining a sample of the selected environment to thereby generate an obtained sample; (b) means for conditioning the obtained sample into a vapor containing known molecules; (c) means for receiving the vapor into clusters that define ions of the molecules, the means comprising first and second ion mobility spectrometers, with only one of the ion mobility spectrometers having arranged therewith a reagent source, each of the first and second ion mobility spectrometers providing electrical signals representative of the respective received defined ions of the molecules; and (d) means for comparing each of the representative electrical signals of the first and second ion mobility spectrometers against predetermined signals representative of the predetermined chemical vapors and generating an alarm signal if a match exists between one of the representative electrical signals and one of the predetermined signals.