Search

Passive flux samplers (PFSs) packed with adsorbents are used to estimate gaseous emissions. A key condition of their use is maintaining a linear relationship between internal and external air velocities. The performance of PFSs designs depends on the characteristics of the adsorption bed and on the sampler design. The parameters required to enable PFSs to estimate greenhouse (GHG) emissions from agricultural sources were studied. The effect of the particle size of the adsorbent used as collector medium was analyzed theoretically using the Ergun equation. Three orifice plates with 0.5, 0.7 and 1 mm bore diameter were evaluated in order to determine the most appropriate diameter to control air flow through a new passive flux sampler (PFS) prototype while maintaining adequate linearity between internal and external air velocity. The effect of the adsorbent bed thickness (19, 50, 100 and 200 mm) on the internal-external air velocity relationship in the PFS was evaluated. The best performance was obtained using the 0.7 mm orifice plate and an adsorbent bed thickness of 50 mm. Spherical adsorbents with high adsorption capacity are recommended in order to decrease the adsorbent bed thickness and improve sampling performance. A series of experiments showed that the estimated mass flow obtained by the developed PFS was close to the confidence interval of values obtained by direct detection. Thus, the developed PFS can be used as a tool for the estimating of GHG emissions from agricultural sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]