Think of Sensor Electronics' products as canaries in coal mines. The Edina-based company's line of infrared sensors can sniff out nearly 100 potentially poisonous and explosive gases—everything from carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to diesel fuel and natural gas to more esoteric killers like boron trichloride, tungsten hexafluoride, and titanium tetrachloride. "We manufacture infrared units specific to each gas to monitor for leaks," says Sensor Electronics Founder Alan Petersen.
Sensor Electronics' potential client pool is immense. A partial list of applications for its products includes pharmaceutical manufacturing, dry-cleaning equipment, and medical-equipment sterilization. Two-thirds of Sensor Electronics' sales are overseas. Many of its clients are multinational corporations that build huge factories outside of North America. One large Korean customer is a major semiconductor manufacturer whose factories need protection from the various exotic gases it uses to make its products. Other clients include oil rigs off the coasts of Mexico, China, and Brazil.
"We are continuously leapfrogging the industry with sophisticated new products using advanced infrared technologies," Petersen says. Infrared light is a continuation of the visible light spectrum that can't be seen, but can be felt as heat. Carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon gases absorb infrared light at varying wavelengths. Very simply, an infrared gas detector is a gas molecule counter. The accumulation of gas molecules results in higher gas concentrations. When the gas being "targeted" is present, some of the infrared energy is absorbed and the sensor detects less light—a "reading" that it signals to the device's users.
Sensor Electronics' technology is applicable to a number of less obvious applications. "When I was about 10, my dad and I were fishing in Fergus Falls," Petersen says. "I saw a guy shooting pigs in the head in the back of a truck. I never forgot that. With a new process, a slaughterhouse can bring in a cow, put it in a sling, drop it in a pit filled with carbon dioxide, and humanely put it to sleep before it's slaughtered." Sensor Electronics' products can be calibrated to ascertain that the level of carbon dioxide being used at a meat-processing plant is neither too low (and thus doesn't put the animal down) or too high (thus wasting gas).
The company's roots date back to the late 1950s, when Petersen began working at Honeywell. After a dozen years there, he and two other Honeywell engineers resigned and purchased a Honeywell product line. "We called the company Detector Electronics," Petersen recalls. "It was primarily focused on fire detection, but also gas detection."
Petersen and his partners sold their company to a British conglomerate in 1990. Feeling he was too young to retire, Petersen bought the rights to a new digital transmitter technology from a Canadian firm, and started Sensor Electronics in 1992. His son, also named Alan, joined him, as did Pat Smith, a design engineer who had worked at Detector Electronics. Both have ownership stakes in Sensor Electronics, which now employs 20 people and brings in annual revenues of $10 million.
To some extent, Sensor Electronics competes with Detector Electronics, but that doesn't mean there's an adversarial relationship between the two companies—or, for that matter, between Sensor and any of its rivals. "We sell to many of our competitors," Petersen says.
At the age of 76, Petersen plans on sticking around a while longer. "We have no intention of selling," he says. "My son and Pat are smart guys. We are a leader in our technology and will continue to grow. When you can compete with the big companies like we do, it's a lot more fun."
