Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.4

Description

Agriculture contributes significantly to emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, including the primary and secondary emissions of PM. In the United States, agricultural emissions play an important role in several atmospherically mediated processes of environmental and public health concerns. These atmospheric processes affect local and regional environmental quality, including odor, PM exposure, eutrophication, acidification, exposure to toxics, climate, and pathogens. There is an urgent need to develop strategies to manage and reduce the effects a changing climate will have on our environment due to the greenhouse gases, which continue to increase in the atmosphere. Improved scientific measurements and control methods of agricultural air pollution are important steps to manage and minimize the effects of these emissions. Potential contributions the farming community and regulating agencies can make to tackle climate change are continued monitoring of agricultural emission sources and implementing air pollution reduction measures. Currently, there are no nationwide monitoring networks in the U.S. to quantify agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases and PM. The cost of air pollution monitoring equipment and the lack of commercial devices that can monitor multiple gases and PM in a single module are two of the main factors for this inefficient agriculture emission monitoring. Therefore, the development of affordable integrated agriculture air pollution monitoring devices is critical to achieve the strategic goal of a cleaner environment and better climate control.In this project, a low-cost air pollution system will be developed and tested in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). This air pollution monitoring system uses multiple gas sensor elements tailored for the detection of methane, ammonia, and nitrous oxide, and a miniature particulate separator with integrated highly sensitive mass sensors to measure respirable particulate matter pollutants. This pollution monitoring system operates for many days using battery power. The operation time can be extended to months if augmented with small solar power source. The unit will wirelessly send the measured pollution level of greenhouse gases and particulates to a computer located >1 km away. Multiple monitoring devices can be installed around agricultural lands and CAFOs to monitor gas pollutants at configurable time intervals and read the measured data wirelessly from a remote location. The proposed project will have many important intersections with future U.S. EPA, government, academic, and commercial research and development in environmental studies. We anticipate that this development will culminate in a full-scale prototype demonstration of the air pollution monitoring platform. Successful completion of this project will lead to the development of a new generation of field particulate load sensor devices. As a standalone system, the proposed device will have multiple functionalities, such as weather monitoring and airborne hazardous material detection, besides air quality monitoring and reporting for environmental compliance requirements. Development of this device will not only introduce a new cost-effective and efficient air pollution monitoring system, but will lay a solid foundation for the application of atmospheric particle sensing applications, especially chemical and biological warfare agent monitoring.