US Government As Represented by the Secretary of the Army

Brian Herndon Miles

Stafford S Cooper

Ernesto R Cespedes

Greg A Theriault

The present invention describes a subsurface soil contaminant identificat system method using a cone penetrometer unit for in-situ elemental composition identification in the form of solids, liquids or gasses. Elemental identification is achieved by using atomic spectral analysis of the contaminants that are stimulated by a laser induced breakdown of the soil contaminants to be determined. The system includes a high resolution spectrometer with array detector, a controller for control/data acquisition, a penetrometer push operation controller and data gathering equipment, an optical fiber link to a cone penetrometer with improved optical focusing components. The improved method of using the system entails: i) soil characterization during an initial penetrometer push, then ii) contaminant identification during the penetrometer retrieval phase from a soil bore hole formed during the initial push. The LIBS based system and method is applicable to elemental atomic detection, identification and concentration quantification of soil contaminants. The method can simultaneously detect several metals during a one data sampling.

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Tucson, AZ, United States of America

Brian Herndon Miles