A team of five Princeton engineering graduate students is leading a yearlong field research project using new laser sensors to measure pollutants with unprecedented sensitivity.
The sensors use quantum cascade lasers to perform chemical fingerprinting of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and water vapor, as well as ammonia and carbon monoxide, which are related to air quality.
These trace gas sensors were developed in laboratories that are part of Princeton's Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE), a center funded by the National Science Foundation. The director of MIRTHE is Claire Gmachl, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and a pioneer in the development of quantum cascade lasers./nThe students are still analyzing the data collected during field research. But Mark Zondlo, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, said that the project "will allow for new insights into the nitrogen, carbon and water cycles in urban and agricultural settings."/nZondlo also said the lasers were robust in the field./n"The new laser sensors proved to work under harsh field conditions from snow and frost to summer heat," he said./nThis video is narrated by David Miller, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering, and shows the group's fieldwork performing atmospheric measurements in April 2012 at a test site run by the Maryland Department of the Environment and Howard University in Beltsville, Md. The site is in the middle of the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., corridor, which faces significant urban air quality issues.

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