hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
Nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) have a negative impact on human health and play an important role in tropospheric air chemistry. Inland waterway vessels are equipped with long lasting diesel engines that emit NOx and might have a significant impact on the local air quality. This is particularly relevant for the residential areas that are located along intensively used waterways, e.g. the Rhine River. Monitoring of NOx emissions from inland waterway vessels could provide the local authorities with valuable information about ship contribution to air pollution.
In this presentation we show that ground-based MAX-DOAS (Multi AXis-Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy) measurements, performed at the Rhine River in western Germany, are feasible for the emission plume identification from individual inland waterway vessels. However, especially for ships with rather low emissions, not always an unambiguous detection is possible, especially if the tropospheric NO2 background is high and variable. For such cases we developed an automatic background correction, and we analysed the emissions in a more statistical way. The focus of this study is put on this method by investigating the height dependency of the averaging background-corrected NO2 signals and finally estimating average NOx emissions from inland ships.
