The Climate Change Research Center’s Instrument Development Group continues to make impressive progress with several parallel instrument developments funded by the Targeted Wind Sensing project. Currently, we are working on several fronts. The following lists the current instruments under development:

Solid State Sensors: These sensors change their resistivity when exposed to the compound to be measured. They hold great promise in advanced instrumentation because they are inexpensive to make and are quite small. Additionally, it may be possible to make a generic platform, where several different solid state sensors could be developed with relatively little change in hardware. Some of the challenges with making a usable instrument based on this technology are precise temperature control of the material and filtering out other compounds that may give a false signal. [ Read More ... ]

Ultraviolet Ozone Instrument: The Targeted Wind Sensing Project has successfully developed, built, and calibrated approximately fifty high precision radiometers. This instrument has been involved in many experiments deployed on mobile semi-autonomous platforms such as balloons and blimps. Additionally, this instrument has been placed within remote system on road sides in New Hampshire and on the Mount Washington auto road. Future work on this instrument includes improving its reliability and measurement accuracy. [ Read More ... ]

Electrochemical Sensors: These sensors change the amount of electrical current when exposed to the compound to be measured. Their potential is similar to the solid state sensors. The challenges associated with this technology are different though. Since this is a current based measurement, very precise electronic circuits must be developed to measure the small (~nA) change in electrical current. [ Read More ... ]

Cryogenic Pre-concentrator: This instrument cryogenically concentrates a sample of air to trap certain volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) that otherwise could not be measured. Once concentrated, the sample air is injected into a Gas Chromatograph. To date two versions of this instrument have been developed and used in multiple experiments. Version 3 of this instrument is on the horizon. We have a new cryogenic system we are confident will be much more robust. [ Read More ... ]

Can Autosampler: We have developed an automated can sampler that can sequentially fill fifteen cans at a time interval specified by the scientist. This allows sampling at remote regions where access may be limited. Future development will include a standalone control system (currently, a custom PC application is needed) and the ability to put multiple devices in parallel increasing the accessing time linearly. [ Read More ... ]