Evaluation of inlets used for the airborne measurement of formaldehyde

[1] The performance of three aircraft inlets used for sampling gas-phase formaldehyde (CH2O) was evaluated. These 1.5 m long inlets were operated with the National Center for Atmospheric Research Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectrometer (TDLAS) at flow rates between 7 and 9 standard liters per minute. Laboratory tests were performed on the 1997 North Atlantic Regional Experiment (NARE 97) TDLAS inlet, involving a wide range of sample temperatures (−40° to 25°C), pressures (250–625 torr), relative humidities (