Analyzing Atmospheric Carbonaceous Material Influenced by Wildfires Through Raman Spectroscopy

Abstract

In 2020, wildfires burned more acreage in the United States than in the past twenty-one years.1 Boreal wildfires are the cause of ten percent of all annual atmospheric soot in the Northern Hemisphere, which is alarming because soot is detrimental to both human health and environmental health. Some of the negative effects of soot come from the polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) content, which plays a role in the formation of soot. In order to study the structural information of PAH in atmospheric soot from wildfires, a free space Raman spectrometer was built and then used to analyze PAH samples. Raman spectra from anthracene (a PAH), graphite, and o-xylene were collected, showing the spectrometer is in working condition. On collection surfaces, as the height above the fire increased, the areas of dark soot decreased, leading to the belief that the area of observable PAH increases with increasing height. If so, PAH travel farther than soot and spread to greater distances. Suspending the PAH particles in a liquid solution was the most promising method of PAH Raman signal collection and will be improved upon in the future.

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