Ambient Pressure LIF Instrument for Nitrogen Dioxide

Concerns about the health effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and its role in forming deleterious atmospheric species have made it desirable to have low-cost, sensitive ambient measurements of NO2. A continuous-wave laser-diode Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) system for NO2 that operates at ambient pressure has been developed, thereby eliminating the need for an expensive pumping system. The use of high quality optical filters has facilitated low-concentration detection of NO2 using atmospheric pressure LIF by providing substantial discrimination against scattered laser photons without the use of time-gated electronics, which add complexity and cost to the LIF instrumentation. This improvement allows operation at atmospheric pressure with a low-cost diaphragm sampling pump. The current prototype system has achieved sensitivity several orders of magnitude beyond previous efforts at ambient pressure (LOD of 2 ppb, 60 s averaging time). Ambient measurements of NO2 were made in Portland, OR using both the standard NO2 chemiluminescence method (CL-NO2) and the LIF instrument and showed good agreement (r2 = 0.92). Our instrument is currently being developed as a “back-end” detector for a more field portable NOy system. In addition, we are currently utilizing this instrument to study surface chemistry involving NO2 at atmospherically relevant concentrations and pressures.