Sensing the air: ammonia, ammonia sensors and improving rural air quality

Ammonia is becoming increasingly recognised by the scientific community as a key air pollutant due to its contribution to PM2.5 formation, as well as directly impacting ecosystem health. It is a growing problem currently facing the UK as well as a problem which will grow in severity in the future as ammonia emissions increase due to climate change and through the potential use of ammonia as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Ammonia sensors are a rapidly developing area with many different technologies being tested primarily for near-emission source monitoring. As with any other measurement which is not a reference, the sensors do need to have standard approaches to collecting air quality data (e.g., the PAS 4023).

The aim of this project is to test the limits of current technologies and understand how they can be used in the rural landscape to enable local stakeholders (including farmers) to understand and visualise the ammonia plumes that cover the country, particularly in spring and autumn. The research will innovatively apply current sensor technologies alongside diffusive sampling technologies 

The project has four main objectives:

1. Develop an economic standard approach for deploying ammonia sensors in combination with diffusive samplers.

2. Use the flagship long-term monitoring infrastructure at the UKCEH Whim Bog field site to test the standard approach and understand the limits and opportunities of the systems

3. Identify 5-10 case study sites where the local protected ecosystem or human activity area is in proximity to ammonia plumes and deploy sensors in spring and autumn

4. Integrate and visualise the sensor data to communicate to non-specialists the invisible ammonia plumes and how they are interacting with ecosystems. Mitigation interventions in the landscape or in the farm environment can also be explored.

https://iapetus2.ac.uk/studentships/sensing-the-air-ammonia-ammonia-sensors-and-improving-rural-air-quality/