History

Qbit was established in Florence in 1999 to meet the technological requests of several small- and medium-sized local enterprises in the fields of optics and opto-electronics.

Florence and its district have been offering a large variety of opportunities in these fields, since the end of the XIX century, thanks to both the University and related research laboratories, and long-standing industries such as Officine Galileo (nowadays SELEX-ES) from which originated a broad background knowledge. For example, the early infra-red light based sensors developed for refrigerant gas leak detection, have been produced in the framework of a collaboration with companies originating from the professional heritage of the Officine Galileo.

Mission

Today Qbit develops and produces instrumentation for environmental measurements, exploiting different technologies, such as infra-red light spectroscopy and laser light scattering. Such instrumentation is successfully employed in the monitoring of particulate matter concentration or in the search and measure of gas traces. Particularly, devices are available for leak detection of refrigerant gases (HCFC, CFC, hydrocarbons), for insulating gas used in High Voltage electrical applications (SF6), for gases traced in environmental monitoring (carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia), and also for some hazardous gases (formaldehyde).

By accomplishing its mission, Qbit helps to reduce the atmospheric pollution due to green house gases or stratosphere ozone depletion due to CFC/ HCFC gases, thus contributing to the improvement of the environmental protection.