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One of our Scoping Studies has written a guest blog post about their Modular Relaxed Eddy Covariant sensor for Air Quality, which will develop a new miniaturised sensor for ammonia. They’re using the instrument expertise from RAL Space.
How might this link to other air quality projects in the network? Post any questions or comments for the MOREC-AQ team here!
Welcome Stefanie! Sounds like you have lots of experience of interdisciplinary working. Feel free to share research in this area, coastal areas haven’t come up very much so far in network discussions so it would be good to hear more.
This looks really interesting Alejandro – once the monitors are developed, are there plans to deploy them in the UK?
Welcome Amy! The network is all about interdisciplinary work around air quality – feel free to share details of your findings on the discussion board in the future. Health is a topic that really sparked the network’s interest at our launch meeting.
Hi Alejandro! It was great to have you in our Collaboration Building Workshop. Indoor air quality has become even more prominent this year – do share any of your publications in the IAQ thread.
This looks really interesting – I love the song in the video! Really engaging way to get the message out to young and old.
Thanks Jean – we’re really keen to involve social scientists in the network. We were pleased that some of our Collaboration Building Workshop participants were from social science disciplines, but we do need more! Looking forward to discussing this further at our Air Quality & Social Science meeting coming up in January (details to be announced in the newsletter soon…)
Peter Fleming, Campbell Associates.
I would say you present the knowledge which will allow people to come to the “right” decision.
We recently provided an AQY to monitor outside of a school. Diffusion tubes indicated that the AVERAGE NO2 conc was just below the 40ug/m3. However monitoring showed that levels were at their highest at the times when the children were arriving or leaving school. Presenting this data has shown parents that parking outside the school at these times was harming their children. This made it easier for them to accept behavioural changes. Indeed , once they saw the data it was the parents who instigated the changes.Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey
From the point of view of a social scientist, the problem with this is that the question is posed the wrong way round! Instead of thinking about how ‘we’ (whoever we are) can change the behaviour of ‘them’, we should be thinking about how science can help citizens to understand their world better so that they can take action to achieve whatever they want to do.In practical terms, that means finding out what people want to do and what the barriers to them doing it are, and then providing them with the knowledge to overcome those barriers.
“At NPL we have an interest in ammonia measurements following our participation in a European project called Metrology for Ammonia in Ambient Air (MetNH3) where we developed stable primary standard gas mixtures in cylinders to validate certain technologies to measure ammonia. This included using our exposure chamber to traceably measure the ammonia diffusive sampling rates of all the common low cost sensors on the market to improve the accuracy of ambient monitoring, alongside assessing pumped sampling (the unofficial “reference” method).
We collaborated with a US manufacturer to reduce the undesirable effects of water cross interference in a cavity ringdown spectrometer (CRDS), and participated in a field campaign at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, which included an open path spectrometer. We have subsequently developed a controlled release facility for ammonia and are working with an SME developing a laser dispersion spectrometer for open path measurements of ammonia through Analysis for Innovators (A4I).
We would also be interested in being involved in projects that are trying to map agricultural releases of ammonia using the latest technologies. For example, extractive measurements require careful sampling strategies but open path measurements can have issues to do with the spectroscopic background.”
Dr Nick Martin
National Physical Laboratorye-mail: nick.martin@npl.co.uk
Web: http://www.npl.co.ukKevin Smith, STFC
Hi Jim,
There are two groups within STFC’s RAL Space that are interested in developing ammonia emissions monitoring systems. One idea has been proposed for STFC Challenge Led Applied Systems (CLASP) funding and would develop a prototype instrument using passive microwave technology for measurements in animal houses or over fields. The other is a system that would allow eddy covariance measurements for identifying sources and sinks of ammonia in the environment. This would use an STFC-patented technique called laser dispersion spectroscopy enabling measurements to be made with 1ppb sensitivity at 10Hz. I’d be very happy to put you in touch with the scientists involved if useful.From Jim Mills, EIC
On the matter of ammonia sensing/monitoring. As Ammonia is notoriously difficult to transport in sample lines without significant losses and memory effects due to its “sticky” nature it may be worth considering open path optical sensing. Tuneable Diode Laser (TDL) systems can measure down to around 50-100ppb with path-lengths of just 10m (5m physically between transmitter and detector) The atmosphere inside animal houses could be monitored directly without the need for complex multi-point heated sampling systems. The longer the path-length (up to around 100m) the better the D.L.
If anyone is interested, I would be happy to discuss further and possibly help facilitate a project.
