Principal Investigator Harold Hemond
NEREUS is the first field-deployable underwater cycloidal mass spectrometer, and can be deployed either from a winch or aboard an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Capable of measuring all the major gases in the water column, it also measures light hydrocarbons and solvents dissolved in water, and has been used as part of our studies of methane cycling. NEREUS has been successfully operated as the payload of an Odyssey-class autonomous underwater vehicle, and a hybrid radio/acoustic network has been developed to provide chemical data from the vehicle in real time. An underwater cycloidal mass spec instrument based on the NEREUS has now been commercialized.