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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
A cellphone based system for large-scale monitoring of black carbon
Atmospheric Environment, Volume 45, No. 26, Year 2011
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Description
Black carbon aerosols are a major component of soot and are also a major contributor to global and regional climate change. Reliable and cost-effective systems to measure near-surface black carbon (BC) mass concentrations (hereafter denoted as [BC]) globally are necessary to validate air pollution and climate models and to evaluate the effectiveness of BC mitigation actions. Toward this goal we describe a new wireless, low-cost, ultra low-power, BC cellphone based monitoring system (BC_CBM). BC_CBM integrates a Miniaturized Aerosol filter Sampler (MAS) with a cellphone for filter image collection, transmission and image analysis for determining [BC] in real time. The BC aerosols in the air accumulate on the MAS quartz filter, resulting in a coloration of the filter. A photograph of the filter is captured by the cellphone camera and transmitted by the cellphone to the analytics component of BC_CBM. The analytics component compares the image with a calibrated reference scale (also included in the photograph) to estimate [BC]. We demonstrate with field data collected from vastly differing environments, ranging from southern California to rural regions in the Indo-Gangetic plains of Northern India, that the total BC deposited on the filter is directly and uniquely related to the reflectance of the filter in the red wavelength, irrespective of its source or how the particles were deposited. [BC] varied from 0.1 to 1μgm-3 in Southern California and from 10 to 200μgm-3 in rural India in our field studies. In spite of the 3 orders of magnitude variation in [BC], the BC_CBM system was able to determine the [BC] well within the experimental error of two independent reference instruments for both indoor air and outdoor ambient air.Accurate, global-scale measurements of [BC] in urban and remote rural locations, enabled by the wireless, low-cost, ultra low-power operation of BC_CBM, will make it possible to better capture the large spatial and temporal variations in [BC], informing climate science, health, and policy. © 2011.
Authors & Co-Authors
Ramanathan, N.
United States, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
United States, Los Angeles
Nexleaf Analytics
Lukac, Martin
United States, Los Angeles
Nexleaf Analytics
Ahmed, T.
United States, La Jolla
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Kar, Abhishek
India, New Delhi
The Energy and Resources Institute India
Praveen, P. S.
United States, La Jolla
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Kenya, Nairobi
United Nations Environment Programme
Honles, T.
United States, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
Leong, I.
United States, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
Rehman, I. H.
India, New Delhi
The Energy and Resources Institute India
Schauer, J. J.
United States, Madison
University of Wisconsin-madison
Ramanathan, Veerabhadran
United States, La Jolla
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Statistics
Citations: 74
Authors: 10
Affiliations: 6
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1016/j.atmosenv.2011.05.030
e-ISSN:
18732844
Research Areas
Environmental
Health System And Policy