Abstract
Urban air quality is of considerable importance in many cities throughout Europe and the USA. In particular, current EU legislation has driven an expansion of monitoring of more pollutants at more sites. At present in the UK, real time readings are now available for benzene, buta-1,3-diene and other volatile organic compounds, airborne fine dust (PM10), CO, 03, SO2, and NOX. Carbon monoxide is produced to varying degrees in all combustion processes but more than 90% is caused by emissions from petrol vehicle exhausts. The World Health Ogranisation guidelines for exposure to the gas is < 10 ppm for 8 h and 85 ppm for periods not exceeding 15 min. All the pollutants mentioned above are monitored by different detection techniques and it has been the authors' philosophy to develop instrumentation which can monitor all the different pollutants using a single detector. To this end, a multiphoton laser based procedure, using simple ionization chambers, has been developed to detect the different pollutants with different wavelengths. For CO, a 2 + 1 resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) scheme at 230 nm can be used with detection limits of about 1 ppm.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.