Dear all,
If you want to estimate ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide emission from:
- arable soil
- slurry storage
- livestock barns
which range of detection should have the sensors in your opinion? I means not precise at the same level to a very complicated laser sensors or eddy covariance towers but something that are able to evaluate the most of emitted gasses.
Many thanks
Marcello
Thaks for your answer. Unfortunately it doesn't allow me to have the answers I am looking for
Have a look at these papers for what to expect for N2O. Fluxes are typically very close to zero from soils, so for precise work regarding the microbial mechanisms, you need ultra precision (< 5 ppb). For work looking at large emissions, noise of a few ppb more will not be so bad so long as enclosure time is extended. Hopefully it helps you.
https://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/7/4455/2014/
Article Nitrous oxide emission sources from a mixed livestock farm
For ammonia, you really want something with sub 5 ppb noise, but the difficulty is in the measurement method itself rather than the instrument. It doesn't matter what the precision of the instrument is if you are using tubing or chambers or any surface that the NH3 will stick to as it will invalidate any flux calculations. Ammonia fluxes can be done using wet chemistry, so the uncertainty comes from the method used to calculate fluxes.
Article Nitrogen use efficiency and N2O and NH3 losses attributed to...
As always, the range of detection is relative to the work you plan on doing, and as measurements vary exponentially and unpredictably for many of these sources there is no straight answer regarding detection limits. However; low precision can be cancelled out to some degree by longer measurement times (more measurement points).
Not a definitive answer, but good luck.
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