NCAR Press Release #1994-8
Release at Will:  March 1994

Contact:  Joan Vandiver Frisch
Manager, NCAR Media Relations
Boulder, CO (303) 497-8607
E-mail:  jfrisch@ncar.ucar.edu

NCAR Staff Granted Patent for Flow Control Sensor System for Use with Air 
Pollution Instruments, Kidney Dialysis Machines, Ink Jet Printers

BOULDER--A patent for an energy-saving, versatile, flow control sensor 
system, which may be used with instruments that need reliable and constant 
flow of a liquid or gas, was issued to Gary Hampton and Patrick Zimmerman 
at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, 
Colorado.  Potential applications are for air pollution-monitoring equipment, 
ink-jet computer printers and kidney dialysis machines.  

Small and lightweight, the constant-flow, low-cost, air-sampling pump 
system saves power by regulating the amount of energy driving the pump, in 
contrast to previous designs, which siphoned energy away to regulate the 
flow of the fluid.  The system is a critical component of instruments that can 
be attached to tethered, helium-filled balloons for measuring trace gases 
above forest canopies and other vegetation, as well as for other applications 
mentioned above.  (See attachment:  Constant Flow Pump Sensor System.)

These devices are currently part of several instruments used in biogenic trace 
gas flux studies at NCAR.  They have been used in field studies to measure 
carbon dioxide and nonmethane hydrocarbon emissions from scrub oak areas 
near Hayden, Colorado, and in rural forests in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and 
urban forests near Atlanta, Georgia.  Information from these studies will be 
used by NCAR scientists to make more precise estimates of greenhouse and 
other trace gas emissions for fine-tuning climate-change models.  The 
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Foundation is 
pursuing licensing opportunities for this technology and has applied for 
patents in Canada, Europe and Japan.  Sponsored by  the National Science 
Foundation, NCAR is managed by UCAR, a consortium of 61 universities 
with Ph.D. programs in the atmospheric or related sciences.