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29

2019

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11

Lidar makes pollution sources nowhere to hide -- an interview with Xu Baodong, general manager of Beijing EVOS technology company


Scientific and technological innovation plays an extremely important supporting role in fighting the tough battle of pollution prevention and control. With the in-depth development of environmental monitoring market, a large number of excellent scientific and technological innovation enterprises in China also grow rapidly, providing advanced environmental monitoring equipment for China's environmental monitoring industry. On September 2, the reporter of environment and life magazine came to EVOS technology company located in Changping District of Beijing to interview Xu Baodong, general manager of the company, and see how this environmental monitoring equipment supplier developed step by step from scratch.

 

AVORS

 

Beijing EVOS technology company has realized the portability of lidar. Xu Baodong, general manager of the company, is standing next to the lidar equipment. Beijing avors Technology Co., Ltd. (avors), founded in 2013, is a supplier of atmospheric environment and meteorological remote sensing lidar. The company's main business is to use lidar technology to make innovations in environmental monitoring, atmospheric governance, meteorology, wind energy and other fields, and provide customers with safe and reliable products, solutions and technical services.

Broaden the application scenarios of lidar

EVOS company was jointly founded by Xu Baodong and other three people. Among them, Xu Baodong graduated from Changchun Institute of Optics and precision machinery (now known as "Changchun University of technology"), where he studied optical technology for his undergraduate and master's degree. After graduation, he stayed in school to do research on optical detection. In 2005, he resigned and came to Beijing to participate in the development of imaging lidar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2011, he left the Chinese Academy of Sciences and went to an environmental protection company as the department head of the radar department to continue his research on lidar. Later, he and two other founders came out to start a business. The expertise of the two founders is complementary to that of Xu Baodong, a research software and a research circuit.

In an interview with the reporter of environment and life, Xu Baodong introduced the difference between his products and traditional radar. The disadvantage of traditional radar is that it is very large and can only be placed in the laboratory. It belongs to laboratory instruments. During operation, a skylight has to be opened for radar testing. The detected data are stored in the computer first and then transferred out for analysis later. Later, scanning radar appeared, which can scan whether there are pollutants outdoors, but radar is not an outdoor all-weather product, which is subject to many restrictions in use. Therefore, the innovation goal of Xu Baodong's team is to make radar products market-oriented and portable, so as to make its application scenarios more extensive. Firstly, Xu Baodong's team solved the problems of outdoor use and data transmission, so that the radar can be used under different temperature and humidity conditions, and realized online data monitoring and online transmission, with very high equipment integration; Secondly, they also solve the problem of remote control. Using cloud technology, the equipment can realize remote control as long as it is connected to the Internet. After inputting the radar ID number, the radar can be connected to the machine, so as to control and monitor and become a real outdoor online equipment.

 

AVORS

 

Huang Runqiu, Vice Minister of the Ministry of ecological environment (left), stopped in front of the booth of Beijing EVOS technology company to listen to the explanation of the staff. In 2013, after the establishment of eworth company, the main product is this product. It is equivalent to a color ultrasound scanner that can see haze. The distribution of haze within a radius of 5km can be seen by radar horizontal scanning in one week, and the problem of pollution source tracking can also be solved. In fact, the goal of lidar products is to track the pollution source, find the pollution source with the highest pollution value by combining with the global positioning system, and then solve the problem.

Seize the market pain point and make the radar portable

In terms of haze monitoring, lidar is the most widely used. Xu Baodong said: "the radar must be portable and mobile. It can be tested wherever there is pollution. Our products have been implemented on the vehicle. This equipment is the most integrated in the world, and the volume is the smallest. The volume of the radar host is only 230mm × 230 mm × 550 mm, which is also the lightest. A young man can carry it away. It is a real portable device. "

 

AVORS

 

This lidar is a product of Beijing EVOS technology company, photographed by Zheng Tingying. Then, how does EVOS realize the portability of the product? Xu Baodong explained: "when we found that there was a demand for portability in the market, the optical expertise I learned made me realize that in order to reduce the volume of the product, we must reduce the volume of the laser light source. We make the light source highly integrated and low power consumption. After the light source is miniaturized, we can optimize other structures. While the volume of the product becomes smaller, the function is not simplified, and all received signal indicators and necessary parameters are not reduced. For example, the receiving aperture still reaches 160mm. The radar launched by other companies is very large, close to 200kg, which is difficult to move after being placed in one place, while our products are only close to 50kg, so as to realize flexibility and portability. Lidar scanning must be placed in a convenient place to move, because there can be no shelter around during scanning. It is usually placed on the roof. "

Xu Baodong added: "while our products become smaller, they also achieve low power consumption and sustainable development. The maximum power of our lidar is 300 watts, generally 50 to 60 watts when the temperature in the car is appropriate, so the working time is prolonged. In the case of the same power supply, the power of products of other companies is more than kW, which can only run for 4 hours, while we can run for 12 hours with our own battery and 21 hours with on-board power supply. At the same time, the radar with low power consumption does not have high requirements for vehicles. The equipped car is an SUV, which can be driven by drivers with an ordinary driver's license, and the application scenario becomes wider. "

It is worth mentioning that eworth is very rigorous in the process of product development. According to Xu Baodong, it took them about a year or two to set up a team before R & D, and then designed three or four schemes for the system structure of the product and tested them at the same time. After the design of various structures, set different temperature conditions to see which structure is more stable, and finally select the most stable model.

 

AVORS

 

In the product assembly workshop of Beijing EVOS technology company, engineers are assembling lidar. Photographed by Zheng Tingying and explained by Xu Baodong: "the last selected lidar product is micro focus, which is safer for operators and more sensitive to detection. Its laser emission energy is only about 20 micro focus; The second advantage is that it has little impact on the surrounding people. Other companies use the millifocal level, so the power consumption of the radar is very high, which is also a problem that can not be ignored for the human eye safety of the surrounding people. "

After 2018, other companies are also launching miniaturized radar. In the face of fierce market competition, Xu Baodong said that he was not worried: "because other companies are not as portable and detectable as us, they just make the optical technology system smaller, the receiving aperture smaller and the volume smaller, which will affect the product performance; In addition, the stability of their products still needs a long time of application verification, and the failure rate is relatively high. The key to developing small radar is technology. "

Particulate flux radar air monitoring

The users of EVOS are mainly the monitoring departments and meteorological departments of provinces and cities. Eworth has a series of products. This year, it launched a new product called "particle flux lidar", which can help the monitoring department find out the transmission intensity and direction of particles and describe the dynamic changes of particles in the air. Flux lidar is also an innovative technology of eworth company. Under the traditional technical conditions, wind profile radar and particle radar must be combined, but now a particle flux lidar can measure wind profile and particle at the same time.

Xu Baodong said: "there have been many performance of particle flux lidar, and the feedback from users is pretty good. Environmental monitoring can be realized by relying on this equipment alone. This equipment is very useful in finding the pollution sources of PM2.5 and PM10. The environmental law enforcement department can find the problematic enterprises through radar, so as to accurately enforce the law and finally reduce the pollution data. If there is a pollution incident, it can also quantitatively find out the source of pollution and avoid all parties shirking their responsibilities. "

 

AVORS

 

This lidar is the product of Beijing EVOS Technology Co., Ltd. Zheng Tingying photography Research Institute has transferred achievements, so don't leave it alone

Xu Baodong revealed that the sensitivity of domestic radar is still not as good as that of the United States and Japan. One or two parts of their radar detector have to be imported from Japan, and the other parts are already made in China.

From scientific research workers to enterprise operators, Xu Baodong has his own understanding of promoting the transformation of environmental scientific and technological achievements: "many domestic scientific research institutes learn from foreign countries and basically follow-up strategy. In fact, after scientific research institutes make products, enterprises can commercialize them, and enterprises have more advantages in this regard. Scientific research institutions and enterprises can form strategic partnerships to make intellectual property rights freer and the transfer of scientific and technological achievements freer. However, the contradiction needs to be solved: the research institute has worked hard to develop finished products, and naturally hopes to have a good return. However, after learning technology, enterprises often think it is not worth much money, which leads to low mutual trust and mutual vigilance. The commercialization of scientific research achievements is not very good. Of course, there are reasons for the limited strength of enterprises, but also related to the retention of scientific research institutes when transferring achievements, which constitutes an obstacle to the market expansion of final products. "

Strive to launch one or two innovative products every year

As the environmental protection market is favored by all parties, there are more and more enterprises engaged in air pollution prevention and control in the market. In the face of fierce market competition, what is the biggest threat of eworth company? Is it a peer imitation? Or the involvement of large companies?

After pondering for a while, Xu Baodong replied: "some listed enterprises have tried to enter our field, but it is not easy to find. Maybe they may not have achieved results in two or three years, so they gave up. So this is not what you can do if you want to. If you really want to get involved, it's better for large enterprises to acquire teams. But in fact, this is a market segment. The cake is too small to meet the appetite of large enterprises. It is not suitable for large-scale teams, and the investment is not proportional to the return. "

When it comes to the development strategy of EVOS, Xu Baodong also had in-depth thinking: "because our products belong to subdivided fields, their market volume and imagination are not enough, and the heat of the investment market is declining, we have no investor and can only seek stability, which will affect the speed of our R & D. In other developing countries, the potential market is still quite large. For example, air pollution in India is very serious, but they haven't seriously dealt with it yet. "

For the current environmental protection market, Xu Baodong feels a little impetuous“ Next, we should calm down and do our products well. Our company started by relying on technology. In the case of insufficient business background, we have to have the spirit of craftsmanship and keep improving our products. In the future, we will launch one or two innovative products every year. The products launched must be unique and leading in technology, "Xu Baodong continued." in addition to developing good products that are not afraid of market inspection, we should also provide good services and make public praise. Because the general trend of the future environmental protection equipment market must be that products are the king. "