You can’t manage what you don’t measure

Nikira Labs doesn’t solve environmental problems on its own, but the cutting-edge technologies behind its innovations are helping scientists and industry professionals make better air quality measurements.

Established in 2017, the Silicon Valley-based firm develops and manufactures gas analyzers used in tackling issues such as climate change, air pollution and air quality monitoring.

Its instruments measure and monitor greenhouse gas emissions, residential and industrial area gas emissions, industrial fence line emissions, ethylene oxide levels in ambient air and methane emissions from oil and gas wells.

And, with a mission of contributing to a healthier world and to addressing the globe’s most urgent environmental challenges, Nikira Labs emphasizes STEM education and supports organizations that promote women and minorities into science and engineering.

PRODUCTS

Nikira Labs specializes in compact, portable, sensitive and cost-effective gas analyzers.

The company product line includes an Ethylene Oxide Analyzer for accurate measurement and monitoring of the flammable and colorless gas both indoors and outdoors of the sterilization facility. Ethylene Oxide is a known human carcinogen used in medical equipment and device sterilization, such as dental and surgical tools, for its unique sterilizing effectiveness.

Other offerings include the Portable Methane Analyzer for leak detection and quantification from abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells. Nikira also offers a host of analyzers for airborne molecular contamination detection in the semiconductor cleanroom and FAB environment, a highly controlled and clean semiconductor fabrication plant.

According to company cofounder and chief technical officer Mannish Gupta, efforts to locate, identify and measure gases have traditionally relied on bulky, expensive and hard-to-operate equipment, much of which is restricted to labs.

“Our mission is to make instruments that can make these delicate measurements in a very small, portable, battery-operated fashion on site,” says Gupta.

“That allows people to really understand sources of greenhouse gases and then ideally mitigate those sources. For example, we know that landfills are a huge source of methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas. By measuring it on site in real time, we can make a lot of actionable decisions that we otherwise couldn’t with conventional equipment.”

ABANDONED OIL AND GAS WELLS

With more than three million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States, it’s estimated that 14-million Americans live within a mile of an abandoned well. The derelict bore holes, known in West Texas as ‘zombie wells’, can potentially contaminate groundwater and release carcinogenic chemicals and potent greenhouse gases into the environment. Methane is a harmful greenhouse gas with a global warming potential that is about 81 times more than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe.

“These wells are either orphaned, meaning nobody claims them, or they’re abandoned and they’re just spewing methane into the air,” notes Gupta.

Along with long-established oil sources like the Permian Basin in West Texas, abandoned and orphaned wells can be found across North America in places such as California, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.

It’s estimated that there are more than 14,000 inactive oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Aside from abandoned wells and other non-conventional pollution sources like landfills and coal mines, Nikira Labs’ portable analyzers are also very effective at detecting pipeline leaks.

“People put the analyzers in cars, drive around looking for pipeline leaks and they can make leak maps of cities to identify precise locations of methane leaks and ideally fix them before they become big enough to be explosive,” says Gupta. “It’s a kind of preventative maintenance.”

SEMICONDUCTOR CLEANROOMS

Another use for Nikira analyzers is in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.

It is essential these “FAB” rooms are highly-controlled environments that are designed to minimize contamination and to ensure the high-quality production of electronic components, especially microchips, by carefully regulating temperature, humidity, airflow and particle levels.

“As chips get smaller, they get denser and the need to control those low concentration contaminants becomes much more stringent,” explains Gupta.

“If dust finds its way onto a silicon wafer, the whole batch of wafers could potentially be rendered void and scrapped, a huge economic loss in material and FAB time, when it adds up.”

For tracking contamination levels in FAB environments, Nikira Labs offers its semiconductor AMC (airborne molecular contamination) Analyzers which measure and monitor ammonia, hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride. These analyzers detect contaminants while shuttled overhead in the FAB via a network of tracks, similar to a subway transit system.

For the record, Taiwan manufactures about 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductors, followed by South Korea, Japan and the United States, each claiming more than 12 per cent of chip production.

On the usage side, chip sales exceeded $527 billion in 2023. Most are used for computer memory, data centers, smartphones, tablets and other wireless and wired communications devices.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Although the bulk of Nikira Lab’s work is with industry and government, the company remains cognizant that air pollution tends to be more of an issue for the lower socio-economic class.

“We do a lot of pollutant measurements and a lot of the areas we test are in neighborhoods, or adjacent to neighborhoods, that are typically on the lower end of the income bracket and they are more impacted by the gas emissions from neighboring industrial facilities,” says Gupta.

He adds that Nikira Labs is working with a group of tenants in New York City, where tough times are forcing some residents to heat their apartments by turning the oven on and leaving the door open.

“That just spews out all the pollutants from your stove – not just the methane, but the acrolein (colorless liquid with a foul and acrid aroma) and other things,” he says.

“That’s how they have to heat their home because they can’t afford the other more conventional methods.”

WORKING WITH PROTOCASE

When it comes to manufacturing its analyzers, Nikira Labs has come to trust Protocase for essential parts such as enclosures and baseplates.

Gupta says he’s impressed by Protocase’s ability to produce high quality parts while living up to its reputation for delivering products in record time.

“It’s quality, speed and the ease of working with Protocase – it’s amazing,” he says. “Over my 30 years of doing this, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone move as fast with such high quality. And, it’s done at a very competitive cost.”

Nikira Labs mechanical engineer Grace Brokaw agrees that the lightning-fast lead times alone set Protocase apart from other suppliers.

“A lot of our projects are really fast-paced and we want a quick turnaround for the whole system, so having the parts in our hands quickly allows us to dedicate more time to thoroughly test everything,” says Brokaw.

“It just makes the whole process move smoother.”

THE FUTURE

As the technologies of metrology continue to advance, Nikira Labs has turned its attention to putting its sensors in places not easily accessible. One solution is to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Another area of interest for the Nikira team is breath analysis for medical diagnosis.

“Every year we get a little closer to being able to let people breathe into a tube and help diagnose a set of conditions or specific conditions,” says Gupta, adding that “breath biopsies are a non-invasive clinical investigative tool that detect volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath.”

“The goal would be to set up an AI-driven diagnostic that identifies breath gas components and how they correspond to specific disease states.”

And, yet another avenue of Nikira Labs research is plant growth.

According to Gupta, NASA is very interested in growing plants in space. However, it has been determined that plants do not like microgravity environment.

“Some plants undergo a lot of stress, so NASA is trying to find early biomarkers of stress – to do that we actually watch the plants breathe and when they start to breathe less efficiently or they start to digest different substrates, it’s a marker that the plants are doing so well.”