SOUTHWEST SCIENCES INC — Department of Energy STTR Phase II: 18c

Description

Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas (GHG,) with an atmospheric lifetime of ~114 years and a global warming impact ~300 times greater than that of CO2. The main cause of nitrous oxide’s atmospheric increase is anthropogenic emissions, and over 80% of the current global anthropogenic flux is related to agriculture, including associated land-use change. An accurate assessment of N2O emissions from agriculture is vital not only for understanding the global N2O balance and its impact on climate and also for designing crop systems with lower GHG emissions. Such assessments are currently hampered by the lack of instrumentation and methodologies to measure ecosystem-level fluxes at appropriate spatial and temporal scales. Southwest Sciences and Princeton University are developing and testing new open-path eddy covariance instrumentation for continuous and fast (10 Hz) measurement of nitrous oxide emissions. An important advance, now being implemented, is the use of new mid-infrared laser sources that enable the development of exceptionally low power (<10 W) compact instrumentation that can be used even in remote sites lacking in power. The instrumentation will transform the ability to measure and understand ecosystem- level nitrous oxide fluxes. The Phase I and Phase II results included successful extended field testing of prototype flux instruments, based on quantum cascade lasers, in collaboration with Michigan State University. Initial tests of an instrument using an interband cascade laser were performed, verifying that an order of magnitude reduction in instrument power requirements can be realized and setting the stage for Phase IIB improvements and testing leading to commercialization. The work plan for sequential Phase II funding includes refining the prototype instrument design to use new interband cascade lasers, realizing a savings in instrument power requirement of over an order of magnitude. Four beta prototype flux instruments will be produced and will be tested extensively in laboratory and field environments. Field testing will be conducted in collaboration with outside researchers who are potential end users of a commercial flux instrument. At the conclusion of the Phase IIB, Southwest Sciences will manufacture and sell commercial open path flux instruments to the atmospheric research community. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The results of this research will be commercialized as a product for N2O measurements that is truly portable and cost- effective. The technology is especially groundbreaking as it could be widely applied across FLUXNET and AmeriFlux sites (>1200 worldwide) for direct measurements of N2O exchange. The technology can be more broadly applied to gas monitoring requirements in industry, environmental monitoring, health and safety, etc.