Collaborative Efforts to Investigate Emissions From Residential and Municipal Trash Burning in India

Abstract

Emissions from trash burning represent an important component of regional air quality, especially in countries such as India where the practice of roadside, residential, and municipal trash burning is highly prevalent. However, research on trash emissions is limited due to difficulties associated with measuring a source that varies widely in composition and burning characteristics. To investigate trash burning in India, a collaborative program was formed among RTI, Duke University, and the India Institute of Technology (IIT) in Gandhinagar, involving both senior researchers and students. In addition to researching emission measurement techniques, this program aimed to foster international partnerships and provide students with a hands-on educational experience, culminating in a pilot study in India. Before traveling, students from Duke and IIT met virtually to design experiments. IIT students were able to visit proposed sites and offer specified knowledge on burning practices prior to the pilot study, allowing potential experiments to be iteratively improved. The results demonstrated a proof of concept of using a low-cost sensor attached to a commercial drone to measure emissions from a municipal dump site. In addition, for small-scale residential and roadside trash burning, a combustor was designed to burn trash in a consistent way. Results suggested that thermocouples and low-cost sensors may offer an affordable way for combustor designers to assess particulate emissions during prototype iterations. More experiences like this should be made available so that future research can benefit from the unique insights that come from having veteran researchers work with students and from forming international partnerships.

Real‐time measurements of PM2.5and ozone to assess the effectiveness of residential indoor air filtration in Shanghai homes

“…These monitors include Plantower PMS3003 sensors for PM 2.5 and Alphasense OX‐A4 sensors for O 3 . These monitors have been thoroughly evaluated for measuring ambient PM 2.5 in both high and low concentration environments 28,43 and have been used for ambient, indoor, personal exposure, and source measurements of PM 2.5 28,44‐46 and O 3 47,48 . In addition, both the performance of the individual Plantower 49‐55 and specifically the Plantower PMS3003 56‐60 have been widely studied.…”

Using Low-cost sensors to Quantify the Effects of Air Filtration on Indoor and Personal Exposure Relevant PM2.5 Concentrations in Beijing, China

“…Additional details about the monitors can be found on our open-source webpage (dukearc.com). These monitors have been used to monitor personal exposure and trash burning emissions in previous publications (Ozler et al, 2018;Vreeland et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019).…”

Breakdown of a Nocturnal Inversion Measured with a Low-Cost Tethersonde System: A High School Student Experiment

“…The LCS consists of a Planttower 3003 PM sensor, Sparkfun SHT 15 for measuring T and RH, realtime clock (ChronoDot 2.1) and an Arduino microcontroller (Teensy 3.2) for controlling the sensors and recording the data. Sensors similar to these have been used by the Bergin group to study pollutant levels in under-developed areas such as Bolivia (Bergin, 2021b) and India (Vreeland et al, 2018).…”