AUTOCLEAR/ Scintrex Trace’s Newest ICAO Detector

AUTOCLEAR/ Scintrex Trace Corporation was provided a research grant by Transport Canada to create a lightweight, portable, explosives screening device for use in the airport environment. Its newest model, the E3100, still in the field-testing phase, is used to detect commercial, military, and homemade terrorist liquid and dry explosives using robust Chemilux sensors. According to the VP of Engineering and Product Development of Scintrex, Georges Vandrish, PhD, “Scintrex will be making at least five units for Transport Canada and TSWG in the current format.”

In the past, military or commercial plastic explosives were not easily detectable because they did not emit vapors. The International Civil Aviation Organization changed this when they announced in 1998 that plastic explosives had to be “tagged” with extremely unstable compounds for detection purposes. Also, conventional IMS devices often fail to detect trace quantities of homemade explosives such as TATP and peroxides, heavily used by most terrorist groups, which Scintrex’s E3100, E3200, E3500, and E4500 Chemilux series detect easily

The E3100 is able to process between 300-350 samples on a single charge of its battery. This device, like the other explosives detectors by Scintrex, uses luminol cartridges, each of which last for approximately 2,000 samples.

It is important to note that the E3100 is also sensitive to explosives made of peroxide. The story of the near-bombings in London not long ago contained evidence of peroxide-based explosives that were to be mixed together and detonated by an electronic device. Since peroxide is not a taggant, most other instruments, before the E3100, would not detect it.

Driving the technological world farther than ever before, AUTOCLEAR/Scintrex Trace has celebrated over 70 years in design and manufacture of reliable and sophisticated screening methods.