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Impact/Purpose:

This is a demonstration project to evaluate the capability of the Tunable Infrared Laser Emission Spectroscopy (TILDES) instrumentation to measure ambient concentrations of air pollutants.

Description:

This project involves the real-time measurement of air quality using open-path IR spectroscopy. A prototype open-path tunable laser absorption spectroscopy instrument was designed, built, and successfully operated for several hundred hours between October and December 2000. The instrument provided real-time, continuous measurement of CO and N2O column densities over a 500 meter line-of-sight distance. Under typical meteorological conditions the instrument exhibited a (1 sigma) detection limit of 300 ppt Hz-1/2 for N2O, thereby demonstrating the ability of the instrument, when suitably deployed, to make precise, realtime, continuous measurements of air pollutants and air toxics (e.g. CO, NO, NH3, ozone, formaldehyde and other species) over several square kilometers of a city.

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