A Mecon employee demonstrates the system in Ranchi on Friday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, May 6: Mecon has developed a system that monitors noxious nitrogen oxides in air, a breakthrough it achieved after two years of painstaking research.

In the presence of senior company officials, including CMD A.K. Ghosh and a team of officials from Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB), Mecon demonstrated its efficacy by monitoring exhaust from traffic in front of its Doranda office gate today.

Pollution board officials were relieved to note that the readings showed that levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) were within permissible limits (80 ppm) in the area, though the same may not be the case near factories or steel plants.

“The main objective of the project was to develop a continuous NOx monitoring system based on infra-red absorption principle and to field-test the system in a running stack in a steel plant,” said S. Chatterjee, the head of the company’s R&D division.

Mecon’s R&D division has been working on the project for the last two years after it received support from the Union steel ministry’s steel development fund for developing the monitoring system.

“The system is able to provide many interesting data such as generating online reports, trend graphs and emission alerts,” Chatterjee said.

The system was also field-tested at various locations within Bhilai Steel Plant. The final report has been submitted to the steel development fund and patent application filed, said J.S. Rao, another key R&D functionary.

After successful development and subsequent field trials of the system, the steel plant has now approached Mecon for developing a multi-gas monitoring system using a single unit. In this system, a single system will monitor emissions of harmful gases such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxides.

Though such imported systems are available in the market, it is not cost-effective, said Mecon officials, hoping that a low-cost indigenous system will help in making industries environment-friendly.

Nitrogen oxide, produced during combustion, is lung damaging, aggravates asthmatic conditions, reacts with the oxygen present in the air to produce ozone and eventually forms nitric acid when dissolved in water, resulting in acid rain which can damage trees and forest ecosystems.