AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Portable Real-time Black Carbon Monitoring Using the MA300: Performance Characterization in Laboratory and Real-world Environments
MRINMOY CHAKRABORTY, Jeff Meiklejohn, Keyhan Babaee, Steven Rogak, Naomi Zimmerman, University of British Columbia
Abstract Number: 659 Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosol
Abstract Black carbon (BC), a powerful climate forcing agent and primary aerosol particle emitted from incomplete combustion, is an important pollutant to consider in air pollution studies, particularly in under-characterized environments (e.g., indoors in rural India). Aethalometers, which use an optical attenuation method, are a popular instrument for measuring real-time BC mass concentrations, but are bulky and difficult to deploy in microenvironments where power and space are limited. The recently developed microAeth MA300 (AethLabs), a portable aethalometer, seeks to overcome these power and space limitations. It is capable of 5-wavelength measurements in both single and dual spot mode and is light, portable, and battery-powered. However, the MA300 is a relatively new instrument, and its performance in different environments (soot generator, urban ambient, wildfire smoke-affected urban ambient) requires assessment.
This study evaluates the performance of MA300 compared to a low-cost BC sensor (ABCD), a 7-wavelength aethalometer (AE33, Magee Scientific) and a DustTrak (TSI) in three different environments: (1) laboratory generated soot particles from inverted burner, (2) ambient measurements at a traffic intersection and (3) ambient measurements during wildfire smoke-impacted periods. The inverted burner provided a stable soot concentration and has been used to examine filter loading corrections. Preliminary comparisons from the inverted burner experiments suggest that without correction, the MA300 tended to overestimate BC concentrations. Ongoing work in ambient environments is being conducted to finalize any MA300 corrections required during different source-dominated (traffic, wildfire) periods.