Abstract

ABSTRACT Kaohsiung city located in the southern Taiwan is an industrial town and air pollutants were emitted from factories in the adjacent industrial zones. In order to track the pollution emission sources, a needle trap sampler (NTS), which is a micro solid phase microextraction (SPME) sampling device, was carried by a quadrotor drone to extract organic vapors from industries. The NTS was fabricated by packing divinylbenzene (DVB) particles of 60–80 mesh diameters into a 7 cm-long, 22-gauge stainless steel needle. The telescoping sampling device was carried by a DJI Mavic Pro quadrotor drone, and its effectiveness for extracting organic vapors from industrial processing air exhausts from chimneys was studied. The total weight of sampling device, including a NTS, a telescoping shaft, a Li-battery, a mini-air pump and the ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) loading frame, was less than 200 g. The mainly emitted compounds, including aromatic hydrocarbons (toluene of 1,450±650 ppb, ethylbenzene of 34±12 ppb and xylenes of 51±25 ppb), formaldehyde (50±12 ppb), alkanes (propane of 30±10 ppb), triacetin (7,620±1600 ppb) and terephthalic acid (20±5 ppb) were collected and then identified by the off-line gas chromatography (GC)-mass spectroscopy (MS) system in the laboratory. The quadrotor drone successfully monitored air pollution and tracked their emission sources from waste incineration, petroleum refinement, chemical processing and electronic part production.

Highlights

  • Technology for monitoring the atmospheric environment using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has recently been developed

  • Micro detectors are suitable for use on a drone for detecting gaseous compounds and particle matter (PM) owing to their light weight and real-time monitoring ability

  • Plant A1 is a capacitor manufacturing factory, in which toluene and ethanol are the main solvents that are used for cleaning

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Summary

Introduction

Technology for monitoring the atmospheric environment using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has recently been developed. Optical and electrochemical micro detectors have been used on a drone to detect the gaseous compounds and particle matter (PM). Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and methane (CH4), are the main monitored gaseous compounds (Huang, 2013; Villa et al, 2016; Schuyler and Guzman, 2017; Gu et al, 2018; Chiba et al, 2019; Guimarães et al, 2019). Micro detectors are suitable for use on a drone for detecting gaseous compounds and PM owing to their light weight and real-time monitoring ability. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are generally detected as TVOCs (total VOCs) and individual compounds cannot be identified using micro detectors

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