Profiling of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Ozone (O3) in an Enclosed Car Park

Air is one of an essential elements for human being to survive. Air pollution originated anthropogenic (man-made) and non-anthropogenic can give adverse effects to human health, environment and ecosystem. It is caused by high concentration of air pollutants present in the atmosphere that emitted directly from its sources or from the reaction between the pollutants itself. Emission and production of pollutants reduces the air quality of both indoor and outdoor environment. Air pollution has been mostly deteriorated by traffic emissions with increasing number of vehicles in the road or public highway and thus lead to high demand of parking area facilities in the city.

Nowadays, rapid industrial development in Malaysia cause shortage of land to sustain the facilities area and hence resulted in construction of high-rise commercial and industrial buildings with enclosed car park system beneath or above the buildings. The nature of air in enclosed car park is much differ from indoor, ambient environment or open-space area due to its confined space and poor ventilation flow system. This study is conducted mainly to determine the air quality in the enclosed car park area affected by reaction of pollutants and emission from vehicles that going in and out from the area.

Concerns of this study is the formation of ozone (O3) due to the relationship between nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and presence of ultraviolet energy. Since there is no direct sunlight in enclosed car park, ultraviolet energy may be emitted from other sources such as lights from the car. The objectives of this study is to identify the concentration level of NO2 and possibility of O3 formation in an enclosed car park with the absence of sunlight as the source of ultraviolet energy. Other than that, data is collected by using AQM 60 equipment and the relationship between NO2 , O3 and surrounding temperature in enclosed car park is analysed by using time series analysis.