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Evaluation of Optical Instruments for Real-Time Continuous Monitoring of Smoke Particulates
Measuring airborne particulate concentrations is very important to land managers as managed forest and rangeland burning increases. Airborne particulates, especially particles smaller than 2.5 µm in diameter (PM2.5), pose potential health, visibility, safety, and nuisance problems. Managing smoke to protect human health and public welfare is an essential part of each prescribed burn plan. The proper use of ambient air monitoring can help ensure that wildland burning complies with State and Federal air-quality laws and regulations while satisfying land management objectives.
Two common types of instruments that measure particle concentration use gravimetric or optical techniques. Gravimetric instruments collect particulates on ventilated filters. The filters are processed at special laboratory facilities to determine the mass concentration of particulate. Optical instruments can use light-scattering or light-absorbing principles to estimate the mass concentrations of airborne particulates. Optical instruments offer several advantages, including real-time, mass-concentration estimates, portability, low power consumption, and relatively low cost. This study focused on evaluating optical instruments alongside a Federal Reference Method (FRM) gravimetric device.
Several commercial vendors manufacture real-time particulate monitoring instruments for estimating airborne mass concentrations. MTDC has evaluated several monitors to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each instrument for settings where air quality is primarily influenced by smoke from biomass burning. The key items evaluated were:
This evaluation will provide forest and fire managers, and air-quality specialists, with information on a variety of commercially available real-time particulate monitors for settings where air quality is primarily influenced by smoke particulates. This information is expected to be useful in smoke management. This evaluation does not recommend one instrument over another, nor does it verify the optical characteristics of any instruments.
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