Solution

Soar Optics is providing a patent pending product to revolutionize the analysis of microplastics.

Current solutions which can determine the size, shape, and chemical composition of each microplastics particle have advanced the field of detection but are still limited in a number of areas, including:

– Speed – the current methods for chemical composition, FT-IR and/or Raman microscopy, are often too slow to characterize all particles in a typical sample,

– Level of expertise required by operators – current methods require experts in the technology for most analysis,

– Cost – most current products are very expensive compared to other analytical equipment in use for the typical laboratory,

– Need for sub-sampling – Due to the speed limitations for current methods, sub-sampling is often required.  Using this method, a small portion of a typical filter is sampled and the hope is that this is representative of the microplastics particles in an entire sample.  While we “hope” for this, it is rarely the case and this introduces some uncertainties into the current measurements.

Soar Optics is developing products that optimize the measurement process.  We place the vast majority of microplastics into general classes for search for those classes.  This allows us to increase the speed of detection and permits the chemical composition of most, if not all, microplastics particles in a given sample.