Air Pollutants’ Effect on Solar Cell Efficiency

[Louise]

Hi. I investigated more in aerosols and partculates. I found out that all aerosol both absorb and scatter radiation. There is a Single Scattering Albedo (SSA) that measures the light absorption of light. For example, a major atmospheric abosrber that has a SSA of 0.23 is Black Carbon, which arises from combustion of fossil fuel.
I am wondering if I can probably collect this particulate matter with a baloon from the car exhaustion tube, while the car engine is on. Is this method feasible and safe? I would also like to vary and test some other particulate matters through frequencies of light.
Thank you very much.

Sam

I think this is a really good research idea. I think a balloon is not a good idea, car exhaust is hot! [Also, the exhaust pipe isreally hot, you could burn yourself badly by touching it] Could you test particles of different sizes that aren't necessarily pollutants. For example, flour. Charcoal is carbon-could you grind it finely enough? (Check with your folks !before! you grind up charcoal in the blender. ) Don't use the stuff with lighter fluid. These some examples... maybe you can come up with more.
Decide what it is you want to test and then think how you could model that.

Louise

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

If you put a balloon on a car exhaust pipe the most likely result is the baloon would pop, or if it survived you'll stall the engine by messing up the oxygen flow. At least that's how a carburator car would work, I'm not as certain in these days of fuel injection on most cars.

If the car was in neutral (stick) or park (automatic) and there was somebody in the driver seat to ensure it did not go anywhere, and you did not attempt this in an enclosed space, it would probably be reasonably safe except for the risk of breathing the fumes or burning yourself on the tailpipe (they get quite hot). You'd have to collect it when the entire car was "cold", or the baloon would melt.

I don't recommend this - both for the difficulty of doing it safely and because even if you succeed the result will contain lots of elements other than what you are looking for. The suggestions of purchasing gaseous elements directly would keep it to one dependent variable, although there is still the difficulty of separating the results from the container you have placed the gas in (you'd need an identical container with ordinary air in it as a control)

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

The kind of charcoal you buy for a BBQ these days is usually saturated with the equivalent of lighter fluid or other chemical to make it ignite quickly. This will also ruin your results, as it mixes other products into your air.

Even if you get normal charcoal that is "just' charcoal, you still have the problem of ensuring a measured amount of gas result. Grinding it fine, measuring it and burning it to ash under something that collects all the gas is probably the only way and that is going to take something more sophisticated than you can easily do at home. I would talk to a chemistry instructor about what resources they have. At minimum, a fume hood would be prudent and some sort of crucible to ensure fire safety.

Anything involving generating gas via combustion is very difficult to control and will have some safety issues.