With the signing off of the consortium agreement, the sixteen-member SPLICE project is officially up and running. Over the next two years, the project will develop QLM’s current prototype quantum gas sensor into a strong commercially viable gas camera, able to detect, localise and crucially quantify gas emissions on a compact, inexpensive platform.

Each member of the consortium contributes unique expertise and experience. STL Tech and Bay Photonics will contribute systems and software design and manufacture to QLM’s core engineering, supported by Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult and building on the ongoing expert research of partners at Aston University, the University of Bristol and the University of Sheffield.

Industrial partners BP, Ametek Land and the National Grid will collaborate on trialling the equipment in multiple types of application environment, demonstrating the robustness and versatility of the system that has been created. Throughout, the National Physical Laboratory, specifically the Emissions and Atmospheric Metrology Group, will provide validation of performance and comparative metrology, proving equivalency or better to existing gas sensing techniques on a fully characterised and understood instrument.

Innovate UK, a branch of UK Research & Innovation, take the lead in project backing, and further support is provided by QTEC, Bristol’s Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre, as well as UKRI’s Industry Strategy Challenge Fund and Glasgow University’s QuantIC quantum technology hub. The project will fund research and development, field trials, production optimisation and commercial presentations, by the end of which the camera and accessories will be fully available to the oil and gas professionals and environmental scientists, enabling a disruptive change to the way methane and carbon dioxide levels are monitored at the facility scale.

Murray Reed, CEO of QLM, said “This project is the crucial next step in taking quantum technology developed at the University into worldwide industrial application and the support from Innovate UK for first building and now launching our consortium has been absolutely outstanding.”

Join us on our journey, as we go from a prototype camera to a full commercial offering, and see how SPLICE can revolutionise the way gas emissions are monitored, reported, and crucially, mitigated as the world transitions towards a net-zero future.