Logo image
Back
Development of an instrument for direct ozone production rate measurements: measurement reliability and current limitations
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Development of an instrument for direct ozone production rate measurements: measurement reliability and current limitations

Sofia Sklaveniti, Nadine Locoge, Philip S. Stevens, Ezra Wood, Shuvashish Kundu and Sebastien Dusanter
Atmospheric measurement techniques, v 11(2), pp 741-761
07 Feb 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-741-2018
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-741-2018View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences Physical Sciences Science & Technology
Ground-level ozone (O-3) is an important pollutant that affects both global climate change and regional air quality, with the latter linked to detrimental effects on both human health and ecosystems. Ozone is not directly emitted in the atmosphere but is formed from chemical reactions involving volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) and sunlight. The photochemical nature of ozone makes the implementation of reduction strategies challenging and a good understanding of its formation chemistry is fundamental in order to develop efficient strategies of ozone reduction from mitigation measures of primary VOCs and NOx emissions. An instrument for direct measurements of ozone production rates (OPRs) was developed and deployed in the field as part of the IRRONIC (Indiana Radical, Reactivity and Ozone Production Intercomparison) field campaign. The OPR instrument is based on the principle of the previously published MOPS instrument (Measurement of Ozone Production Sensor) but using a different sampling design made of quartz flow tubes and a different Ox (O-3 and NO2) conversion-detection scheme composed of an O-3-to- NO2 conversion unit and a cavity attenuated phase shift spectroscopy (CAPS) NO2 monitor. Tests performed in the laboratory and in the field, together with model simulations of the radical chemistry occurring inside the flow tubes, were used to assess (i) the reliability of the measurement principle and (ii) potential biases associated with OPR measurements. This publication reports the first field measurements made using this instrument to illustrate its performance. The results showed that a photo-enhanced loss of ozone inside the sampling flow tubes disturbs the measurements. This issue needs to be solved to be able to perform accurate ambient measurements of ozone production rates with the instrument described in this study. However, an attempt was made to investigate the OPR sensitivity to NOx by adding NO inside the instrument. This type of investigations allows checking whether our understanding of the turnover point between NOx-limited and NOx-saturated regimes of ozone production is well understood and does not require measuring ambient OPR but instead only probing the change in ozone production when NO is added. During IRRONIC, changes in ozone production rates ranging from the limit of detection (3 sigma) of 6.2 ppbv h(-1) up to 20 ppbv h(-1) were observed when 6 ppbv of NO was added into the flow tubes.

Metrics

13 Record Views
12 citations in Web of Science
10 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#13 Climate Action
#3 Good Health and Well-Being
#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Logo image