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Methamphetamine Detection

NLECTC West is able to offer assistance to law enforcement agencies with the following methamphetamine detection technologies: Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and Physical Gas Sampling.

Fourier Transform InfraRed Spectroscopy (FTIR)

Fourier Transform InfraRed Spectroscopy (FTIR) is a valuable analytical tool for characterizing and identifying organic molecules. The infrared spectrum of an organic compound acts like a fingerprint and provides specific information about chemical bonding and molecular structure.

FTIR equipment was used during Desert Storm to capture real-time infrared signatures of background chemicals present in the ambient environment as well as the chemical composition in the chemical plume of interest. Subtracting the background data from the plume data via software, the system provides an analysis of any chemical species unique to the plume that radiates in the 8.5- to 12-micron band. This real-time analysis allows a trained observer to rapidly identify many chemical species.

In November 1995, NLECTC-West demonstrated the potential of FTIR to support law enforcement agencies searching for high-volume clandestine laboratories. Working with the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement as well as local police and sheriff's organizations, NLECTC-West sponsored a court-approved large-scale methamphetamine "cook". The multistage processing of methamphetamine from diet and cold pills used a "recipe" developed by large gangs operating in the remote areas of the southwestern United States.

During the final stages of processing an organic solvent, freon, was introduced to the methamphetamine mixture. The addition of this solvent was noted immediately by the monitoring equipment even though the "plume" was invisible to the human eye and the detector was not inside the plume itself.

Physical Gas Sampling

Gas sampling devices can be used to remotely detect and monitor the effluent by-products of illegal activities such as methamphetamine synthesis.

Compounds present in the atmosphere in the parts-per-trillion to parts-per-billion level are now readily detectable when thermally desorbed and anlyzed by a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS). This is because adsorbing the compounds on the traps has effectively preconcentrated the compounds in the air by about 1 millionfold. The data from the GC/MS analyses are subjected to computerized identification routines from search lists of target compounds. The results from each set of three adsorbent traps are additively combined to give the final molecular abundance for a single air sample.

A portable atmospheric sampling system has been developed in a suitcase configuration to collect air samples from traces of volatile and semivolatile compounds in the ambient atmosphere. The system consists of an air pump, aerosol separator, a series of adsorbent traps, and a rotometer. This suitcase system contains four sets of three adsorbent traps for collecting up to four samples. Each trap (in the set of three used to collect a sample) consists of a stainless-steel tube packed with one of three different carbon-based, sieve-type adsorbent materials and has stainless steel bellow valves at each end.

The pump station draws ambient air through the sieve train to trap and partition the organic constituents on the sieves according to their surface absorption properties. These samples are returned to a laboratory where the sieve tubes are individually thermally desorbed, cryoconcentrated, and then flash-heat injected into a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer system for analysis. The molecular signature from the collection is postprocessed by a computer to generate the list of all molecular effluent trapped.