New Instrumentation for Emission Measurements

道路上的车辆排放对发达国家和发展中国家的城市和区域污染做出了很大贡献，因此可能对气候和人类健康产生重大影响。 该项目将进一步开发现有的红外光度计方法，以高时间分辨率和显著降低的每传感器成本进行选择性痕量气体测量，然后测试部署在多车道高速公路上的此类传感器阵列，以测量各种代表性道路和交通条件下的车辆排放。 任务包括优化传感器原型性能，实验室测试传感器对环境条件变化的响应，然后部署在道路上进行进一步测试，并与更传统的测量方法进行比较。 对现有技术的这种改进可能会通过实地应用导致对道路上移动的排放源的新的科学认识。 这项研究的更广泛的影响包括必要的前期工作，导致无人值守的低成本传感器广泛应用于各种道路上的车辆排放，从而使新的成本效益的仪器和采样协议，在未来监测遵守车辆污染控制法规。 这将明显有利于更好地理解和改善气候、宜居性和人类健康，特别是在城市/工业化地区，并导致通过可持续城市发展产生与公共健康和社会效益有关的具有高度政策相关性的新兴技术。 该项目还将为一名研究生的论文研究奠定基础，并为一些本科生提供研究经验的机会。

On-road vehicular emissions make large contributions to urban and regional pollution in the developed and developing worlds, and as such can exert significant effects on climate and human health. This project will further develop an existing infrared photometer method for selective trace gas measurement at high time resolution and at significantly reduced cost-per-sensor then test an array of such sensors deployed on multi-lane highways in order to measure vehicular emissions under a variety of representative road and traffic conditions. Tasks include optimizing sensor prototype performance, laboratory testing of sensor response to changes in ambient conditions, then deploying on-road with further testing and comparisons with more traditional measurement methods. This improvement of existing technology may lead through field application to new scientific insights regarding emissions from on-road mobile sources. The broader impacts of this research include necessary preliminary work leading to widespread application of unattended low-cost sensors for a variety of on-road vehicle emissions, thereby enabling new cost effective instrumentation and sampling protocols in the future for monitoring compliance with vehicular pollution control regulations. This will have clear benefits for better understanding and improving climate, habitability and human health, particularly in urban/industrialized regions and lead to emerging technology of high policy relevance related to public health and societal benefit through sustainable urban development. The project will also form the basis of dissertation research for one graduate student and provide research experience opportunities for a number of undergraduates.