Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Atmospheric chemists and exposure scientists simulate the atmosphere in the laboratory to study chemical transformations related to human health and climate. The `round bottom flask' and `reaction vessel' for atmospheric studies are environmental chambers. The requested infrastructure is a pioneering light emitting diodes (LEDs) setup to irradiate an environmental chamber for photochemical studies. Last year, Dr. Borduas-Dedekind built a basic 8m3 cubic environmental chamber in her unique high-ceiling lab in Chemistry at the University of British-Columbia. However, this chamber urgently needs the requested lighting infrastructure to launch an interdisciplinary research program studying photochemical processes in the atmosphere, such as OH radical oxidation and smog formation. Without these lights, current HQP in Chemistry and Medicine at UBC and at Vancouver Island University cannot move forward with their research projects on evaluating the fate of pollutants under simulated sunlight. The funds will support a first-of-its-kind large environmental chamber illuminated by LEDs and capable of studying stratospheric, tropospheric and indoor air chemistry within the same infrastructure. The environmental chamber will operate narrow and tunable emission wavelengths of 275, 300, 365, 400, 500 and 600 nm using custom LEDs (Violumas), enabling the use of one, some or all wavelengths for controlled irradiance of outdoor and indoor processes. This infrastructure will be used daily, is intended to have a lifetime of at least 2 decades and is considered to be low risk and high impact. There currently exists no comparable chamber at UBC or in Canada with the specifications we urgently need: large (for gas phase and exposure research), modular (for batch mode and continuous mode experiments) and lit (for OH radical and NOx chemistry). Thus, our modular LED environmental chamber will become the center for air quality collaborative research programs at UBC to study the fate of atmospheric molecules and train the next generation of scientists. The proposed environmental chamber will enable the study of emergent topics: from the chemical composition of cannabis emissions to wildfire photochemical changes to biogeochemical cycling of selenium and to personal cloud chemistry. The team of co-applicants at UBC are experts in gas-phase chemistry and photochemistry (Borduas-D.), aerosol chemistry and physics (Bertram), contaminant fate and mobile measurements (Krogh), air pollution exposure in athletes (Koehle), ensuring the success of the construction, operation and HQP training of the illuminated environmental chamber. The research output will include high quality data relevant for government and industry stakeholders to predict the fate of pollutants and exposure outcomes. Understanding the chemical reactivity and transformation products of compounds under simulated sunlight conditions is necessary to predicting, regulating, and mitigating exposure for Canadians.