Sunburst Sensors Wins Award to Build OOI pH and CO2 Sensors

 

Sunburst Sensor’s Submersible Autonomous Moored Instrument will collect measurements for OOI. (Credit: Photo provided by J. Newton, Sunburst Sensors, LLC)
(Click to enlarge) : Sunburst Sensor’s Submersible Autonomous Moored Instrument will collect measurements for OOI. (Credit: Photo provided by J. Newton, Sunburst Sensors, LLC)

Sunburst Sensors, an engineering company based in Missoula, Montana that designs autonomous chemical sensors to measure pCO2 and pH, has been selected to design and manufacture pH and CO2 sensors for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).

The progress of Sunburst Sensors and its technology benefited from a National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) award issued in 2008 to fund projects for the development of sensors to measure biological, bio-optical, or chemical properties of the ocean.  The awarded project was titled “An Autonomous Indicator-based pH Sensor for Oceanographic Research and Monitoring” and was led by PI Dr. Michael DeGrandpre from the University of Montana.

Sunburst’s new sensors are called Submersible Autonomous Moored Instruments (SAMI) and are capable of measuring pH and CO2 in both sea and fresh water.  The sensors, specifically 77 SAMI-pHs and 35 SAMI-CO2s, will be used by the OOI in their program to develop a global network of ocean observing systems to collect physical, chemical, geological, and biological information on the ocean and the sea floor.  The data collected will be available online as a resource for researchers and the general public to help increase our understanding of the global oceans.

The OOI is an NSF-funded program housed at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, DC.  The NOPP Office would like to congratulate Sunburst Sensors on their award.  It is always great to see NOPP-funded projects achieve such wonderful successes!