Post-processing Method to Reduce Noise while Preserving High Time Resolution in Aethalometer Real-time Black Carbon Data

Real-time aerosol black carbon (BC) data, presented at time resolutions on the order of seconds to minutes, is desirable in field and source characterization studies measuring rapidly varying concentrations of BC. The Optimized Noise-reduction Averaging (ONA) algorithm has been developed to post-process data from the Aethalometer, one of the widely used real-time BC instruments. The ONA program conducts adaptive time-averaging of the BC data, with the incremental light attenuation (ΔATN) through the instrument’s internal filter determining the time window of averaging. Analysis of instrument noise and the algorithm performance was conducted using Aethalometer 1-second data from a soot generation experiment, where input BC concentrations were maintained constant and an optimal ΔATN min value was defined. The ONA procedure was applied to four additional data sets (1 s to 5 min data), including cookstove emissions tests, mobile monitoring, continuous near-road measurements, and indoor air sampling. For these data, the algorithm reduces the occurrence of negative values to virtually zero while preserving the significant dynamic trends in the time series.