Atmospheric Processes Laboratory
Atmospheric chamber interior.
CE-CERT's Atmospheric Processes Laboratory is the most advanced facility in the world for the study of chemical processes in the troposphere using smog chambers. The smog chamber facility, constructed with $2.9 million in support from the Environmental Protection Agency, allows precise control of variables such as temperature, pressure, humidity, light and heat. Its unique design allows for experiments at very low reactant concentrations, a minimization of particle losses, and sampling with high flow-rate analyzers. Since its opening in 2001, a significant amount of research has been conducted on the formation of ozone and particulate matter.
Research engineer Irina Malkina draws a sample.
Unlike earlier generation chambers, the APL can perform research at ambient levels of pollution, eliminating the need for extrapolating experimental results back into the real world. This capability was enhanced in 2006, when a $1.5 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation allowed the purchase of a large suite of a new generation of instrumentation for the chamber.
The W.M. Keck Foundation recently provided $1.5 million to upgrade instrumentation in the Laboratory. Instruments in this ground-level chamber measure activity in the chamber upstairs.
The chamber contains two 90 m3 Teflon® reactors whose size minimizes particle losses and allows large sampling rates. A 200 kW argon arc lamp provides the most realistic light spectrum available in an indoor chamber of this size. The chamber in which the Teflon reactors reside is continually flushed with purified air, resulting in low background contamination, which allows high quality data at low pollutant levels.
Instrumentation
The gas phase instrumentation includes:
- a full array of commercial ambient air quality analyzers (NO, NOx, NOy, NOy-, CO, Ozone, etc.),
- dual Agilent gas chromatographs (GC's) for hydrocarbon analyses,
- a long path-length tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer (TDL) for formaldehyde and NO2 monitoring,
- a custom-designed cavity ring-down spectrometer (CRDS) for monitoring oxidants and oxidation products,
- custom-built analyzers for measuring peroxyactyl nitrate and nitrogen dioxide with high specificity,
- and a high-sensitivity Ionicon proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS) for real-time measurement of hydrocarbon decay and oxidation product formation and decay.
The aerosol instrumentation includes:
With the chambers black lights on, Doctoral candidate Quentin Malloy adjusts the pressure on the Teflon reactors (off camera to the right). In the middle of the wall to the left is the 200 kW argon bulb with a light spectrum highly similar to that of the sun.
- dual scanning electrical mobility spectrometer (SEMS) instruments for measuring real-time particle size and concentration distribution,
- a Kanomax aerosol particle mass analyzer (APM) for real-time particle density,
- an Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) for chemical characterization of particles in real-time,
- a tandem differential mobility analyzer (TDMA) for measuring water or organic uptake by particles,
- and an Agilent liquid chromatograph with time-of-flight mass spectrometer (LC-TOFMS) for determining chemical composition of collected aerosol and gaseous products.
Contact Information
Students adjust equipment prior to experimentation in the Teflon reactors behind them.
For further information contact:
David Cocker
Research Faculty
Tel: 951-781-5695
E-Mail: dcocker@cert.ucr.edu
More information on the chamber.
