Client
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
Project Objectives
- Design and build an instrument to measure the flux of ozone above surfaces such as the ocean, terrestrial environments, or permanent snow/arctic environments
- The instrument must have a temporal resolution of 10 Hz and measurement accuracy of 1 ppt/sec
- The design of this instrument is based on the eddy-correlation technique. In this method the flux of ozone into a surface is determined by the cross correlation of the vertical velocity fluctuations and ozone concentration fluctuations above the surface.
Summary of Project and Results (Non-Confidential)
- The fluctuating concentration of ozone was measured by detecting the photons generated by chemiluminescence of the reaction between ozone and nitric oxide (NO)
- Designed and built the chemiluminescence reaction chamber of ozone and NO
- Assembled a vacuum pump system to draw in ambient air and nitric oxide
- Installed systems to control the reaction chamber pressure and reactant flowrates
- Installed a photomultiplier tube and liquid refrigerant cooling system to cool the PMT and reduce the dark current levels
- Installed the electronic circuitry and electrical noise reduction systems to convert photons into ozone counts per second
- Developed a computer control system using LABVIEW to control the experiment and measure the cross-correlation of ozone counts/sec and vertical velocity fluctuation signals from an anemometer
Ozone Flux Chemiluminescence Instrument