Design of a mobile aerosol research laboratory and data processing tools for effective stationary and mobile field measurements

摘要

A compact mobile aerosol research laboratory (MoLa) for stationary andmobile measurements of aerosol and trace gas characteristics was developedat the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz, Germany. Majorefforts were made to design an aerosol inlet system which is optimized andcharacterised for both, stationary and mobile measurements using a particleloss modelling approach. The instrumentation on board allows thedetermination of a multitude of physical and chemical aerosol parameters,for example particle number and mass concentration (PM_1/2.5/10),particle size distributions in the diameter range 6 nm up to 32 μm, andchemical composition of the sub-micron aerosol. Furthermore, trace gasconcentrations of O₃, SO₂, CO, CO₂, NO, NO₂ and watervapour as well as meteorological parameters like temperature, relativehumidity, pressure, wind, solar radiation and precipitation are measuredtogether with various housekeeping parameters. All instruments collect datawith high time resolution in the second to minute-range. The measurementplatform, as well as data acquisition and handling tools, are optimized forefficient application to various measurement settings. The mobile laboratoryis designed to be used for mobile investigation of anthropogenicallyinfluenced environments. Possible applications include pollutant mapping,chasing of mobile sources or Lagrangian-type measurements in emissionplumes, but also stationary measurements with possible frequent positionchanges and a well-characterised instrument setup. In addition to the designand features of the mobile laboratory, its inlet system and instrumentationas well as examples of applications of this platform are presented.Challenges associated with such measurements and approaches to extract thedesired information from the mobile datasets are discussed.