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A UV differential optical absorption spectrometer for the measurement of sulfur dioxide emissions from vehicles

J T Pisano1, C G Sauer1, J Robbins2, J W Miller1, H Gamble2 and T D Durbin1,3

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A differential optical absorption spectrometer for measurements of low-level sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from vehicles in real time was developed and employed. With a time resolution of 3 s and an optical path length of 19.6 m, a minimum detection limit of 75 ppbv SO2 (three times the standard deviation) was achieved. The wavelength region covered, UVB, was chosen to include the major SO2 absorption feature at 300 nm, while avoiding wavelength regions in which other components of vehicle exhaust are known to absorb. However, formaldehyde was found to be present in vehicle exhaust in high enough concentrations to be a major interferent. The analysis software was modified to account for the formaldehyde interferent using a two-dimensional fitting routine. The application of the instrument to real vehicle exhaust demonstrated that it was capable of measuring the contribution to SO2 emissions from lubricant oil sulfur over the range of current and future oil sulfur levels.


PACS

07.88.+y Instruments for environmental pollution measurements

89.60.-k Environmental studies

89.40.Bb Land transportation

07.60.Rd Visible and ultraviolet spectrometers

Subjects

Instrumentation and measurement

Environmental and Earth science

Dates

Issue 12 (December 2003)

Received 16 June 2003, accepted for publication 9 September 2003, in final form 28 August 2003

Published 6 October 2003



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