Low-Cost Characterization of Wildfire Emissions Using a Novel Sensor Array

AMANDA GAO, Matthew Goss, Erik Helstrom, Jesse Kroll, MIT

     Abstract Number: 616
     Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods

Abstract
Wildfires, which emit a host of harmful airborne pollutants, are becoming larger and more frequent in the United States. Biomass burning is a major source of atmospheric volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are directly harmful to human health and produce secondary pollutants such as PM2.5. Real-time indoor measurements of VOCs and aerosols emitted from wildfires are generally made using state-of-the-art mass spectrometers that can be challenging to use due to their high cost and substantial maintenance requirements. Here, we describe low-cost measurements of wildfire emissions made using optical particle sensors and a novel VOC sensor array. The novel sensor array design seeks to overcome the limitations of any single VOC sensor, which can only output a single broadband scalar value representing varying sensitivities toward a wide range of compounds; here, we leverage multidimensional data made from twelve non-specific VOC sensors representing three fundamentally different measurement technologies, each with unique, controlled parameters. By using low-cost measurements of indoor wildfire smoke intrusion and ambient wildfire smoke emissions alongside data from co-located reference instruments, we examine the extent to which the response of the sensor array provides useful and quantitative information about wildfire smoke composition and chemistry. This work also provides an improved understanding of low-cost sensor capabilities and limitations in measuring wildfire emissions and helps to inform future developments and applications.