Best Poster Award

Monday 14 November 2011

The research work carried out as a part of Dr. Prashant Kumar’s EPSRC first grant on dispersion of traffic emitted nanoparticles in vehicle wakes won the ‘Best Poster Award’ at the HARMO 14 (14th International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes) conference in Kos Island, Greece. The competition for this award was open for researchers below 35 years of age. The ‘Best Poster Award’ was chosen after the independent voting from the conference participants and steering committee members finalised the decision.

The aims of the research were to study the changes in nanoparticle distributions due to the competing influences of dilution and transformation processes over the travel time from tailpipe to roadside and to model the fate of the particles in the near and the far wake regions of a moving vehicle. The aims were achieved by conducting both field measurements using a state–of–the–art instrument fast response differential mobility spectrometer and wind tunnel simulations in boundary layer wind tunnels at the University of Surrey. These experiments produced a high resolution database that was used in the development of fast, parameterised models that might be applied directly to these complex situations or embedded in operational dispersion models.

This 13–months project concluded in July 2011 and the journal and conference articles published as an output can be found here. Credits of this research work go to Dr. Matteo Carpentieri who worked on this project as a post–doctoral researcher and to Dr. Kumar’s collaborators Prof. Alan Robins, Prof. Rex Britter, Dr. Matthias Ketzel, Dr. Jonathon Symonds and Dr. John Dennis. Thanks also to Dr. Paul Hayden, Mr. Allan Wells, Mr. Alastair Reynolds and Mr. Pouyan Joodatnia for their help in the preparation of the experimental setup. Also acknowledged is the support from Mr. Chris Ward and Mr. Jim Moir for enabling us to carry out the experimental campaigns in the University car park, and to Mr. James Northam from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. for providing the weather data.

Please feel free to contact Dr. Prashant Kumar for further details on this research or on related topics. The award winning poster can be downloaded from here.