Remote Sensing of Hydrocarbons and Toxic Pollutants: Workshop Minutes. Held in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 6-7, 1989

摘要

A number of remote sensing techniques are now available for monitoring hydrocarbons and toxic airborne pollutants. Filter and dispersive spectroradiometers (line integral in ppb range; cost about $35K) with restricted versatility are sold commercially. The more versatile FTIR's (line integral in ppb range; cost $50-100K) and DIAL's (range-resolve in ppm range; cost $100-200K) are now becoming commercially available. Automatic, unattended field operation has been successfully demonstrated for several types of such adaptable remote sensing systems. FTIR's and DIAL's complement each other in identifying a pollutant's presence and its spatial extent; there is potential for improving their performance by a factor of ten or more in the next ten years. Much of the promise for FTIR's lies in their reliance on computer software and hardware to perform the frequency analyses and to access the stored libraries of reference spectra. If avalanche photodiodes for the thermal infrared can be made feasible for field work, there is a potential for an additional order of magnitude or more of performance improvement. Rapid line-tuning will be easier as the development of optical modulators for the infrared progresses.