AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Portable Air Quality Monitoring Systems for Responding to Highly Localized Pollution Concerns
JOSEPH P. MARTO, Maxime Gorson, James Schwab, H. Dirk Felton, Patricia Fritz, University at Albany, SUNY
Abstract Number: 229 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Mobile air quality monitoring systems allow for rapid assessment of air quality concerns. By building eight portable monitoring enclosures we are creating a flexible system to address extremely localized—and often undetected—air quality, such as temporally and spatially unique rural air quality events including response to wood smoke from wood-fired heating technologies. All eight weatherproof enclosures will have the capacity to continuously detect PM2.5 scatter using pDR1500 DataRam nephelometers as well as wind speed and direction, temperature, and humidity using LUFFT weather sensors. Data collected by the units over periods of days to months will be automatically recorded to enclosed Toughbook computers for analysis.
To adapt for various scenarios all of the units will have the option of being equipped with additional sensors, which will be deployed when appropriate; and enclosures will have separate inlets to allow for simultaneous monitoring of gases and particles. These additional optional sensors include RAEGuard 2 PID toxic gas detectors, Alphasense Electrochemical detectors for both CO and NO2, Alphasense NDIR CO2 sensors, Brechtel Manufacturing TAP black carbon sensors, and Xonteck 901 canister samplers to allow for follow-up detection of toxic gases. Additionally, two of the units will also be outfitted with Magee AE33 black carbon PM2.5 sensors. In this poster we will highlight information on the construction, calibration, and testing of these enclosures as well as any preliminary data collected.