Field Deployable Aerosol Optical Absorption Spectrometer

This project will develop an innovative multiwavelength aerosol optical absorption spectrometer implementing direct and sensitive in situ measurement of optical absorption. The ultimate goal is to develop a technology that is rugged, compact, low-maintenance and inexpensive to allow wide-scale deployment of the proposed aerosol spectrometers in the field, potentially including aerial platforms. The Phase I project will demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, which includes designing and building a laboratory prototype of the aerosol optical absorption spectrometer, characterizing the instrument performance using absorbing aerosols with pre-defined optical absorption properties in collaboration with University of California, Irvine (UCI), and outlining the calibration procedures. The Phase I work will determine the performance characteristics of the spectrometer and identify the engineering challenges of transitioning the technology to a standalone compact field-deployable prototype system in Phase II.