Project Title and Description
Enabling Passive Air Quality Sampling at Unique Times of the Day
In collaboration with the Urban Health Collaborative, a dense network of passive samplers of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) (Ogawa passive sampler) is being established across Philadelphia. Nox are reactive gases that indicate nearby combustion sources. Passive samplers use a filler housed in a rain shelter (e.g., a cylinder open on only one face), and modeling of the flow across the opening of the shelter allows us to calculate the average concentration of NOx during the time the filter was exposed. Statistical modeling with the observations from this network will inform epidemiological studies that estimate the health effects of exposure to air pollution. One challenge is that chemistry in the atmosphere causes the correlation of concentration to the source to be influenced by other species in the atmosphere as well as sunlight. This project requires that students develop a prototype for deploying two passive samplers that could be exposed to air a prescribed, unique times as well as the associated calculations to determine the average concentrations across the specified exposures.
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Shannon Capps
Please contact the faculty advisor at sc3623@drexel.edu.
Team Make-up by Discipline
Environmental, Mechanical and Computer Engineering students only