Aerosols are large liquid or solid particles that impact public health, climate, and energy balance in the atmosphere.  A longstanding gap in our understanding of atmospheric aerosols is the processes underpinning new particle formation (NPF) – the nucleation and growth of gas-phase precursors to larger particles.  Precursors implicated in NPF include volatile organic compounds, ozone, sulfuric acid, ammonia, and substituted amines.  In order to monitor NPF in the regional area, we constructed a novel hand-held multisensor device based on Arduino microcontroller technology to simultaneously measure different gas and particulate matter concentrations.  The hand-held Arduino multisensor is paired with an Android smartphone via Bluetooth to transmit concentrations, location and temporal information in real-time.  The data collected by the hand-held Arduino multisensor is visualized with geographic information system software and compared to land-based atmospheric probes at the CAPABLE site at the NASA Langley Research Center.  Regional NPF results will be shown that demonstrate the utility of the device and the extent to which aerosol concentrations are affected by location and seasonal variations of gas concentrations.

Regional new particle formation measurements with an arduino multisensor device

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.