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SUMMARY:EESS talk on "Chemically-informed monitoring of atmospheric partic
 ulate matter"
DTSTART:20180410T121500
DTEND:20180410T131500
DTSTAMP:20260916T210802Z
UID:69afc4802e65b955acd172556464f67f059906db5b651a60d114aaa7
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Satoshi Takahama\, Assistant Tenure Track\, Atmospheric 
 Particles Research Laboratory\, APRL\nAbstract:\nThe World Health Organiza
 tion (WHO) lists air pollution as the world's "largest single environmenta
 l health risk".  Particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter
 \, or PM2.5\, is a pervasive pollutant emitted or formed from a multitude 
 of sources and contains thousands of different types of compounds. Its tot
 al mass is regulated out of concerns for their impact on cardiovascular an
 d respiratory health of the human population\, but it is estimated that 84
 \\% of the world's population is exposed to conditions that exceed recomme
 nded atmospheric concentration limits set forth by the WHO.\n\nContinuous 
 monitoring of PM2.5 is therefore necessary to understand the local air qua
 lity\, emission control strategies\, and impacts regulations have on their
  concentrations. In this effort\, chemical speciation must accompany mass 
 concentration measurements to understand their source contributions\, how 
 they change over time\, and evaluate our capability to simulate their emis
 sion\, transport\, and photochemistry in air quality models. In this talk\
 , I describe the current state-of-the-art for PM2.5 chemical speciation mo
 nitoring\, and introduce a low-cost\, chemically informative technique bas
 ed on Fourier Infrared Transform (FTIR) spectroscopy that can augment curr
 ent practices in PM2.5 measurement.\nFTIR characterizes the chemical compo
 sition of PM2.5 based on absorption of mid-infrared radiation by its const
 ituent molecules\, which reveals the underlying functional group structure
 s present. While FTIR has enjoyed a long history for measurement of atmosp
 heric gas composition\, interpretation of condensed-phase spectra poses si
 gnificant challenges that we overcome through judicious selection of calib
 ration samples and mathematical algorithms. I describe our technical effor
 ts to make FTIR useful toward the monitoring community and other endeavors
 \, coupled with a means for improving our evaluation of chemical simulatio
 ns using functional group representations that can be obtained by FTIR. Fi
 nally\, I describe a novel finding that results from our work in applying 
 FTIR to a large data set consisting of monitoring network measurements in 
 the US\, Switzerland\, and other field campaigns\, which potentially simpl
 ifies our understanding of the complex organic fraction in atmospheric par
 ticulate matter.\n\n\nShort biography: Satoshi Takahama has been a tenure-
 track assistant professor at EPFL and head of the Atmospheric Particle Res
 earch Laboratory (APRL) since 2012.  He received his BS in civil engineer
 ing from the University of Texas at Austin and PhD in chemical engineering
  from Carnegie Mellon University\, and spent six years at the Scripps Inst
 itution of Oceanography as a postdoc and scientist before coming to EPFL. 
 The research of APRL encompasses various domains of atmospheric aerosol ch
 aracterization through numerical simulation\, statistical modeling\, and h
 ardware development\, with recent work focusing on chemical characterizati
 on of the carbonaceous fraction of particulate matter in monitoring networ
 ks.
LOCATION:GR A3 32 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==GR%20A3%2032
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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