Electrochemical ozone sensors: A miniaturised alternative for ozone measurements in laboratory experiments and air-quality monitoring

Ozone (O-3) measurements are a critical component of air quality management and many atmospheric chemistry laboratory experiments. Conventional ozone monitoring devices based on UV absorption are relatively cumbersome and expensive, and have a relative high power consumption that limits their use to fixed sites. In this study electrochemical O-3 sensors (OXB421, Alphasense) were used in a miniaturised O-3 measurement device combined with LabJack and Labview data acquisition (DAQ). The device required a power supply of 5 V direct current (VDC) with a total power consumption of approximately 5 W. Total weight was less than 0.5 kg, low enough for portable in situ field deployment. The electrochemical O-3 sensors produced a voltage signal positively proportional to O-3 concentrations over the range of 5 ppb-10 ppm. There was excellent agreement between the performances of two O-3 sensors with a good linear coefficient (R-2 = 0.9995). The influences of relative humidity (RH) and gas sample flow rate on sensor calibrations and sensitivities have been investigated separately. Coincident calibration curves indicate that sensor performances were almost identical even at different RHs and flow rates after a re-zeroing process to offset the sensor baseline drifts. Rapid RH changes (similar to 20%/min) generate significant and instant changes in sensor signal, and the sensors consistently take up to 40 min to recover their original values after such a rapid RH change. In contrast, slow RH changes (similar to 0.1%/min) had little effect on sensor response. To test the performance of the miniaturised O-3 device for real-world applications, the O-3 sensors were employed for (i) laboratory experiments to measure O-3 loss by seawater uptake and (ii) air quality monitoring over an 18-day period. It was found that ozone uptake by seawater was linear to the volume of linoleic acid on a sea surface microlayer and the calculated uptake coefficients based on sensor measurements were close to those from previous studies. For the 18-day period of air quality monitoring the corrected data from the O-3 sensor was in a good agreement with those obtained by reference UV O-3 analyser with an r(2) of 0.83 (n= 8502). The novelty of this study is that the electrochemical O-3 sensor was comprehensively investigated in O-3 measurements in both laboratory and ambient air quality monitoring and it can to be a miniaturised alternative for conventional O-3 monitoring devices due to its low cost, low power-consumption, portable and simple-conduction properties. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.