About the Project
The sensor’s performance under real-world conditions is further explored in our latest field analysis, where it was integrated into a semiconductor facility’s clean dry air network. DOCA Sensor Case Study in a Semiconductor Fab’s Clean Dry Air System The DOCA project addressed a significant challenge in industry: the detection of oil contaminants in high-purity compressed air. It developed an online sensor capable of detecting oil contaminants in all forms — liquid, aerosol, and vapor — with extremely high sensitivity in accordance with ISO-8573 Class 1 standards. The absence of any reliable, highly sensitive, online sensor system had forced critical industries to rely on less effective alternatives.
Target industries for this technology included hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturing, automotive, chemical processing, textiles, electronics, and clean room environments. The project was funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme managed by REA — Research Executive Agency (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement N. 286106. The project reference is FP7-SME-286106, and it ran from 1 September 2012 to 30 August 2014.
Project Progress
The project was structured into several work packages. Work Package 1 covered Consortium Management, ensuring smooth running of the project, effective communication between the consortium and the European Commission, and that all knowledge was created, managed, and disseminated in a coordinated manner. It also ensured compliance with EC requirements for communication and reporting.
Work Package 2 focused on Exploitation and Dissemination — protecting project results, developing a business plan, and publishing outcomes. Work Package 3 addressed the Development of Functional Specifications, ensuring a problem-oriented research approach with a clear market focus. Additional work packages covered sensor development, electronics, software, testing, and validation.
Key Milestones
In March 2014, the DOCA sensor head was in its final stages and had successfully demonstrated sensitivity below the parts-per-billion level for simple oil. By November 2014, sensitivity and linearity of the sensor head were confirmed at the Dutch Metrology Institute VSL using certified gas mixtures. That same month, the software team recorded signals onto the FPGA platform and initial data processing was being implemented.
In December 2014, the graphical user interface was completed and the packaging of the electronics was finished. In January 2015, the DOCA sensor was successfully tested on the industrial-type facility at PAJ. In February 2015, the team demonstrated the prototype DOCA sensor at the final meeting at REA, and the sensor patent was filed with the Danish patent authorities. By September 2015, the Danish patent authorities confirmed the patentability of the DOCA patent claims and innovative technology.
The DOCA project was born from a pressing industrial need: the reliable detection of oil contaminants in compressed air systems. Across numerous sectors, the purity of compressed air is a critical requirement, yet traditional monitoring methods have long fallen short. Manual laboratory analysis, while established, is labour-intensive, slow, and inefficient for continuous quality assurance. This gap forced industries to operate without real-time knowledge of their air quality, introducing risk into sensitive processes. The project set out to solve this problem by developing an online sensor system that could monitor compressed air continuously, detecting contaminants in liquid, aerosol, and vapor forms with the high sensitivity demanded by modern manufacturing and processing environments.
The technology at the heart of the DOCA project leverages optical spectroscopy to achieve its exceptional detection capabilities. This approach allows the sensor to identify and quantify oil contaminants even at extremely low concentrations, meeting the stringent requirements of ISO-8573 Class 1 standards. The development focused on creating a system that is not only highly sensitive but also robust, stable in calibration, and resistant to interference from other substances. Repeatability and reliability were central design goals, ensuring that the sensor could be trusted for continuous, unattended operation in demanding industrial settings. This technical foundation represents a significant advancement over conventional manual sampling methods.
The potential benefits of this technology extend across a wide range of industries. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, compressed air purity is essential to product safety and regulatory compliance. Hospitals rely on clean air for patient care and medical equipment operation. The automotive, chemical, and textiles sectors all require high-quality compressed air for various critical processes. By providing a reliable, online monitoring solution, the DOCA project enables these industries to enhance their quality control capabilities, reduce the risk of contamination-related product defects, and eliminate potential civil liabilities. Companies can achieve greater confidence in their operations and the quality of their end products.
The DOCA consortium brought together a group of competent partners, including specialised SMEs and leading research organisations, to tackle this complex challenge. The project was structured around dedicated work packages, each addressing a key element of the development pathway, from sensor design and optical engineering to validation and demonstration. This collaborative approach ensured that the final system met the real-world requirements of target industries. The project's outcomes represent a meaningful step forward for compressed air quality monitoring, offering an alternative to inefficient manual analysis and providing industries with the tools they need to guarantee conformance to purity standards in a cost-effective and reliable manner.