A Measurement of Total Reactive Nitrogen NOy Together With NO2 NO and O3 Via Cavity Ring-Down Spectros
A Measurement of Total Reactive Nitrogen NOy Together With NO2 NO and O3 Via Cavity Ring-Down Spectros
A Measurement of Total Reactive Nitrogen NOy Together With NO2 NO and O3 Via Cavity Ring-Down Spectros
pubs.acs.org/est
■ INTRODUCTION
Reactive nitrogen compounds play a central role in atmospheric
they require calibrations at least every few days and must be
reconditioned, or cleaned, every few months of continuous
chemistry. Nitrogen oxides (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) strongly affect operation, although the latter depends on the history of
the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere through the catalytic exposure.1−3 Additionally, the chemical processes involved in
cycle that produces ozone (O3) in the lower atmosphere. Total the catalytic conversion are not fully understood.4 Inlet design
reactive nitrogen (NOy) includes NOx and all its reservoirs: can also play a major role, as some NOy species, notably HNO3,
can suffer significant losses on nonheated inlet surfaces.2,5
NOy ≡ NO + NO2 + NO3 + 2N2O5 + HNO3 + HONO In this paper, we report a new method for detection of NOy
+ HO2 NO2 + PAN (peroxy acetyl nitrates) as part of a compact system that measures NO, NO2, NOy, and
O3 based on cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS). Similar to
+ aerosol nitrates + organic nitrates + ... direct absorption spectroscopy, CRDS is an absolute measure-
ment of trace gas concentration, with an accuracy inherently
Knowledge of the abundance of this chemical family, as well
limited only by knowledge of the absorption cross section and
as NO, NO2, and the related compound O3, is a useful indicator
of total nitrogen emissions, air mass age, competition between potential interfering absorbers. For the instrument described
different chemical processes, and the efficiency of ozone here, small species-dependent corrections must be made only
production associated with particular emission sources. Stand- for sampling losses, conversion efficiencies, and dilution factors.
ard measurements of NOy rely on catalytic decomposition of
NOy to NO, followed by NO detection using chemilumines- Received: April 17, 2014
cence.1,2 The most commonly used materials for conversion are Revised: July 2, 2014
gold and molybdenum. However, catalytic converters are prone Accepted: July 14, 2014
to deterioration, affecting conversion efficiencies. As a result, Published: July 14, 2014
© 2014 American Chemical Society 9609 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es501896w | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 9609−9615
Environmental Science & Technology Article
Furthermore, the instrument has lower power, size, weight, and mirror degradation in the NOy channel under conditions of
vacuum requirements than a chemiluminescence-based instru- extremely large hydrocarbon concentration in ambient air, to be
ment while approaching its sensitivity, precision, and time discussed below.
response. In the NOy CRDS instrument we describe here, NOy The optical system is mounted in a custom designed cage
and its components are converted into NO2 by thermal system with 1/2 in. carbon fiber rods providing stability against
decomposition (TD) in a fused silica inlet (henceforth referred mechanical and thermal stress. A schematic of the cage system
to as quartz following convention), followed by the addition of can be seen in Figure 1. To increase stability and compactness
ozone to convert NO to NO2. The successful use of TD has
been demonstrated for various individual NOy compounds
(N2O5,6 peroxy nitrates,7,8 HONO,9 ClNO2,10 alkyl nitrates,
and HNO38,11), but the combination of thermal dissociation
plus ozone has not, to our knowledge, been demonstrated
previously for measurement of total NOy. It represents an
analytical simplification for NOy measurements over methods
that only detect NO2 through thermal dissociation, since it does
not require the summation of separate measurements. We
combine this with existing techniques for measuring NO, NO2,
and O3, allowing all four of these important and related species
to be measured simultaneously with precision, accuracy, and
time response sufficient for their measurement in ambient air
across a range of environments and measurement platforms, Figure 1. Schematic of the custom cage system that houses all the
including measurements from moving vehicles. optical components. A large section has been cut out for ease of
■ EXPERIMENT
The instrument is based on in situ detection of NO2 via cavity
illustration. The laser is shown in blue, and the optics have been left in
place. The combination of aluminum plates and carbon fiber rods give
the system high mechanical rigidity, helping to achieve a measurement
precision of a few pptv on a minute time scale.
ring-down spectroscopy.12−16 The working principle of CRDS,
as well as the conversion of O3 and NO to NO2, has been
described in detail in previous papers16,17 and will only be over previous designs, the distance between cavity mirrors has
summarized here with emphasis on the design improvements. been reduced from 1 m to 50 cm. We reuse the cavity mirrors
Sampling is done by pulling ambient air through Teflon inlet with 1 m radius of curvature and have found a minimal loss of
lines or our NOy converter, and data are acquired in 1 s sensitivity. The corresponding ring down time constant (τ0),
intervals. An 80 mW laser diode centered at 405 nm and determined by a combination of mirror reflectivity and Rayleigh
modulated with a 2 kHz square wave provides light for the four scattering losses at ambient pressure, is approximately 30 μs,
measurement channels. A Faraday optical isolator provides with a precision (1σ, 1s) of 6 ns.
protection from optical feedback into the laser. When the light The instrument as a whole is compact and requires low
is modulated off, the intensity inside the optical cavities power and maintenance. It measures approximately 110 cm
decreases exponentially as measured by four photomultiplier high with a 50 by 70 cm footprint and consumes 300 W of
tubes that detect the light intensity transmitted through the rear power at its peak. It weighs 95 kg, which includes the sample
mirrors. The exponential decays are coadded and fitted once pump, a zero air generator, and the data acquisition system.
per second to extract the time constant with (τ) and without The data acquisition system, however, has not been designed
(τ0) the absorber present. The number density of the absorber for low weight and currently contributes 15 kg, a figure which
is then given by could be substantially reduced. The instrument also requires a
cylinder of O2 and a cylinder of NO (2000 ppm in nitrogen).
1 ⎛1 1⎞ These additions can be contained in 1.2 L cylinders mounted
[NO2 ] = ⎜ − ⎟
cσNO2 ⎝ τ τ0 ⎠ (1) directly in the instrument rack and last for 4 days of continuous
operation. Standard 30 L cylinders would provide >120 days of
where c is the speed of light and σNO2 is the NO2 absorption continuous operation.
cross section. Previous 405 nm CRDS instruments from this NO2 is directly measured in all channels via eq 1, whereas
group have included purge volumes adjacent to the mirrors to NO, O3, and NOy are quantitatively converted to NO2 prior to
maintain their cleanliness. Purge volumes require a multi- measurement. Atmospheric NO is converted to NO2 via
plicative factor, RL = d/l in eq 1, where d is the mirror reaction with excess O3, created by flowing O2 over a Hg Pen-
separation and l is the length over which the sample is present. Ray lamp (185 nm). As described in detail by Fuchs et al.,16 the
This factor may have had a dependence on pressure that added O3 results in a small percentage (<1%) of NO2
introduces uncertainties into the measurement.18 The instru- conversion to NO3, which subsequently reacts with NO2 to
ment described here does not currently include mirror purge form N2O5. Similarly, O3 is converted to NO2 via the same
volumes, which simplifies the calibrations and eliminates a reaction by the addition of excess NO as described by
possible source of error. However, the elimination of the purge Washenfelder et al.,17 but without the N2O5 interference
volumes can lead to degradation in mirror reflectivity under because NO + NO3 → 2NO2.
some circumstances. Since the sampled air is in direct contact Conversion of the NOy species is performed via gas-phase
with the mirrors, some compounds can condense onto the thermal dissociation in a quartz inlet, chosen for its high
mirrors, causing a decrease of the time constants. This has been melting point and because it is relatively unreactive.11 Figure 2
observed in an environment with high relative humidity and depicts a conceptual drawing of the NOy converter. During
required drying of the sampled air. We have also encountered normal operations, the front half of a quartz tube is heated such
9610 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es501896w | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 9609−9615
Environmental Science & Technology Article
Figure 5. (a) A representative time series showing several days of measurement comparing the total NOy as measured by our instrument with the
sum of NOy components during the February/March UBWOS field campaign, during which NOx contributed 28% to NOy. (b) Correlation plot of
NOy to the sum of components for the entire campaign. (c) A time series comparing the total NOy measured by TD to total NOy measured by a Mo
catalytic converter used by Atmospheric Research and Analysis, Inc. (ARA) during the June/July SOAS field campaign, during which NOx
contributed 43% to NOy. (d) Correlation plot for the two methods for the entire campaign. All data shown are 5 min averages.
sampling site in a natural gas extraction field.25 Installation of a inlets were separated by about 110 m horizontally and 15 m
hydrocarbon scrubber tube downstream of the NOy converter vertically, with the ARA inlet positioned a few meters above
prevented mirror reflectivity degradation without apparent ground. Although mirror purge volumes were also not used for
influence on measured NOy, increasing response time by a this campaign, a hydrocarbon scrubber as in the UBWOS
mere 150 ms.26 We observed the scrubber to be required for campaign was not required. However, the high humidity of air
measurements during this campaign, though subsequent trials, sampled during summertime in Alabama required drying the
including another campaign in the Uintah Basin in 2014, did sample air with a cold trap for all the channels (after the
not require use of the scrubber. In the upper part of Figure 5, converter for the NOy channel) in order to avoid signal
we show the comparison between our total NOy measurement degradation due to water vapor condensation on the mirrors.
and the sum of the NOy components as measured by different This modification is similar to that used on commercial CRDS
instruments (not including organic nitrates), for which NOx instruments that measure NO2 alone.15 The cold trap reduced
represents a 28% contribution to NOy. Figure 5a shows a the relative humidity to <15% but did not measurably influence
representative time series over a few days. In Figure 5b, we plot the transmission of NO2.
the correlation between the NOy measurement and the sum of The lower part of Figure 5 shows a comparison of the two
the components over the whole campaign. The data presented measurements. In this case, the average NOx contribution to
are 5 min averages because inlets had small differences in
NOy was 43% during the SOAS campaign. High concentration
location (several meters separation) at the field site, and
spikes tended to show poorer agreement, most likely due to the
because of frequent transient high-NOx spikes that were
separation between the inlets. In Figure 5c, we plot a time
inhomogeneously mixed. On average, the new NOy instrument
measured 0.9 ppbv (6%) higher NOy than the sum of series of the two instruments spanning 2 days with low
components. This difference may be due to organic nitrates, occurrences of large concentration spikes. In Figure 5d, we
for which data are not available in 2013, or simply from the show a correlation plot of all the data from the campaign. The
combined uncertainties of the individual measurements. slope is equal to unity to within our 5% measurement
The SOAS campaign was a six-week study in central Alabama uncertainty, but there is an average offset of about 140 pptv.
in June and July of 2013. The site is colocated with a SEARCH This offset may be caused by variation in the sensitivity to
network monitoring station maintained by Atmospheric specific components of NOy, such as coarse aerosol nitrate,
Research and Analysis, Inc. (ARA), which collects long-term between the two instruments, a real difference in ambient NOy
measurements of a suite of gases, including total NOy. The due to the separation of the inlets, a systematic error between
ARA NOy measurement is performed using a standard Mo the two instruments, or a combination of these. Nevertheless,
catalytic converter that converts NOy to NO, followed by the observed offset provides an upper limit for our NOy
chemiluminescent detection of NO. The SOAS campaign thus measurement uncertainty relative to an accepted standard
provided an opportunity for direct comparison between the measurement method. Taking the difference between the two
TD-CRDS NOy and a more conventional NOy instrument. The measurements, dividing it by our measurement, and averaging
9613 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es501896w | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 9609−9615
Environmental Science & Technology Article
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■
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AUTHOR INFORMATION (12) Mazurenka, M. I.; Fawcett, B. L.; Elks, J. M.; Shallcross, D. E.;
Corresponding Author Orr-Ewing, A. J. 410-nm diode laser cavity ring-down spectroscopy for
*E-mail: [email protected]. trace detection of NO2. Chem. Phys. Lett. 2003, 367, 1−9.
(13) Wada, R.; Orr-Ewing, A. J. Continuous wave cavity ring-down
Present Address spectroscopy measurement of NO2 mixing ratios in ambient air.
⊥
Department of Chemistry, University of York, York, YO10 Analyst 2005, 130, 1595−1600.
5DD, United Kingdom (14) Hargrove, J.; Wang, L.; Muyskens, K.; Muyskens, M.; Medina,
Notes D.; Zaide, S.; Zhang, J. Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy of Ambient
The authors declare no competing financial interest. NO2 with Quantification and Elimination of Interferences. Environ. Sci.
■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Joost de Gouw for help with calibrations and
Technol. 2006, 40, 7868−7873.
(15) Castellanos, P.; Luke, W. T.; Kelley, P.; Stehr, J. W.; Ehrman, S.
H.; Dickerson, R. R. Modification of a commercial cavity ring-down
spectroscopy NO2 detector for enhanced sensitivity. Rev. Sci. Instrum.
data analysis. This work was funded in part by an Innovative 2009, 80.
Research Proposal Grant from the Cooperative Institute for (16) Fuchs, H.; Dubé, W. P.; Lerner, B. M.; Wagner, N. L.; Williams,
Research in the Environmental Sciences at the University of E. J.; Brown, S. S. A Sensitive and Versatile Detector for Atmospheric
Colorado and in part by the NOAA Atmospheric Chemistry, NO2 and NOx Based on Blue Diode Laser Cavity Ring-Down
Carbon Cycle and Climate (AC4) Program.
■
Spectroscopy. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, 43, 7831−7836, PMID:
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