Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection
Global temperature rise and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have affected the health of the world’s ocean and water ecosystems, impacting the balances of natural carbon cycling and causing ocean acidification. Additionally, as global temperatures rise, thawing permafrost has stimul...
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ftmit:oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/138962 2023-06-11T04:15:43+02:00 Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection Blevins, Morgan Grace Michel, Anna P. M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2021-06-16T13:26:04.658Z application/pdf https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138962 unknown Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138962 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright MIT http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ Thesis 2021 ftmit 2023-05-29T08:15:20Z Global temperature rise and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have affected the health of the world’s ocean and water ecosystems, impacting the balances of natural carbon cycling and causing ocean acidification. Additionally, as global temperatures rise, thawing permafrost has stimulated increased release of methane (CH4), a gas with a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere but with even more heat trapping ability than CO2. In situ analysis of dissolved gas content in surface waters is currently performed with large, expensive instruments, such as spectrometers, which are coupled with gas equilibration systems, which extract dissolved gas from water and feed it to the sensor. Accurate, low cost, and portable sensors are needed to measure the dissolved CH4 and CO2 concentration in water systems to quantify their release and understand their relationship to the global carbon budget. At the same time, while greenhouse gases are well established threats to water ecosystems, the ubiquity and potential consequences of microplastics in aqueous environments are just beginning to be recognized by the environmental research community. Microplastics (MPs) are small particles of polymer debris, commonly defined as being between 1 µm and 1000 µm. Despite the pervasiveness of MPs, our ability to characterize MPs in the environment is limited by the lack of technologies for rapidly and accurately identifying and quantifying MPs. This thesis is concerned with the engineering challenges prompted by the need for high quality and quantity environmental data to better study and the impact, cycling, and prevalence of these pollutants in aqueous environments. Three distinct investigations are presented here. First, the design of the LowCost Gas Extraction and Measurement System (LC-GEMS) for dissolved CO2 is presented. At just under $600 dollar to build, the LC-GEMS is an ultra-portable, toolbox-sized instrument for dissolved gas sensing in near-surface waters. The LCGEMS was characterized in the lab and demonstrated ... Thesis Ocean acidification permafrost DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
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Global temperature rise and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have affected the health of the world’s ocean and water ecosystems, impacting the balances of natural carbon cycling and causing ocean acidification. Additionally, as global temperatures rise, thawing permafrost has stimulated increased release of methane (CH4), a gas with a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere but with even more heat trapping ability than CO2. In situ analysis of dissolved gas content in surface waters is currently performed with large, expensive instruments, such as spectrometers, which are coupled with gas equilibration systems, which extract dissolved gas from water and feed it to the sensor. Accurate, low cost, and portable sensors are needed to measure the dissolved CH4 and CO2 concentration in water systems to quantify their release and understand their relationship to the global carbon budget. At the same time, while greenhouse gases are well established threats to water ecosystems, the ubiquity and potential consequences of microplastics in aqueous environments are just beginning to be recognized by the environmental research community. Microplastics (MPs) are small particles of polymer debris, commonly defined as being between 1 µm and 1000 µm. Despite the pervasiveness of MPs, our ability to characterize MPs in the environment is limited by the lack of technologies for rapidly and accurately identifying and quantifying MPs. This thesis is concerned with the engineering challenges prompted by the need for high quality and quantity environmental data to better study and the impact, cycling, and prevalence of these pollutants in aqueous environments. Three distinct investigations are presented here. First, the design of the LowCost Gas Extraction and Measurement System (LC-GEMS) for dissolved CO2 is presented. At just under $600 dollar to build, the LC-GEMS is an ultra-portable, toolbox-sized instrument for dissolved gas sensing in near-surface waters. The LCGEMS was characterized in the lab and demonstrated ... |
author2 |
Michel, Anna P. M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Blevins, Morgan Grace |
spellingShingle |
Blevins, Morgan Grace Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection |
author_facet |
Blevins, Morgan Grace |
author_sort |
Blevins, Morgan Grace |
title |
Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection |
title_short |
Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection |
title_full |
Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection |
title_fullStr |
Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection |
title_full_unstemmed |
Field-Portable Dissolved Gas Sensing and Perspectives in Aqueous Microplastic Detection |
title_sort |
field-portable dissolved gas sensing and perspectives in aqueous microplastic detection |
publisher |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138962 |
genre |
Ocean acidification permafrost |
genre_facet |
Ocean acidification permafrost |
op_relation |
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/138962 |
op_rights |
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright MIT http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ |
_version_ |
1768372774727843840 |