A Novel Approach to Black Carbon Generation: Automated Soot Generation System Leveraging Real-Time Feedback for Enhanced Precision and Cost Efficiency
KYAN SHLIPAK, Jeff Blair, Steven Blair, L. Drew Hill,
Aethlabs Abstract Number: 230
Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosol
AbstractBlack carbon (BC), a toxic, carbonaceous aerosol, has increasingly been tied to various adverse health effects, compelling community and policy driven measures to include BC monitoring in public health and climate action plans. Despite the need, there is currently no standard for calibrating real-time BC monitors to ensure accountability across technologies and manufacturers. Precise and affordable controlled BC generation would be an invaluable step towards such a standard. Recent projects developing precise BC generation systems have used inverse flame soot generation in dilution-based systems. However, dilution-based BC generation systems are sensitive to daily environmental variables, such as temperature, soot accumulation, humidity, and flame characteristics, leading to significant error between target and observed BC concentrations. We developed a novel automatic black carbon generation system (ABCGS) integrating an inverse flame soot generator and leveraging a real-time concentration feedback loop to improve the accuracy, ease of use, and reliability of precise BC generation systems. Rather than trying to fix each environmental condition, the ABCGS obviates the need by characterizing and adjusting to the behavior of BC concentrations over time, substantially reducing the total construction cost of precise BC generation systems. The ABCGS utilizes electronic components, Python scripting, and a graphical user interface to sequentially reach and maintain predefined BC concentrations for user-specified durations. It can currently test up to 57 BC monitoring devices simultaneously, though larger capacity sampling plenums are in development. Preliminary results suggest the ABCGS can consistently and precisely produce BC concentrations from just 2 μg/m
3 to over 100 μg/m
3 with an absolute error typically within 0.5 μg/m
3 + 4% of the goal concentration, suggesting the system can be used to test and calibrate black carbon monitors. We present the results of additional testing conducted to determine the long-term performance of the soot generation system.