Field Day #1

We arrived up at the Metz Road well site and met up with another research professor who is also monitoring the well. With his flow meter, we observed a whopping 17-19 L/min flow rate which is beyond what we were expecting for this well before arrival. There was a sulfur smell in the air, which indicated possible trace gas leakage with methane emissions from the well. Since the well is a long pipe from the extraction and up to 2 out pipes, sound of gurgling from the ground hit our ears.

After the initial observation, ARTEMIS’s wagon was spurred into action (the official name of this model is coming soon). The field day consisted of a series of moving to different locations within the area around the well, setting up our tripod weather station with a sampling line, taking our Ozone, Nitrous Oxides (NOx), and weather measurements, and repeating. While running through these steps, it solidified my understanding of what we need to observe minute by minute by experiencing it first-hand as well as making sure not to get the Kestrel, our weather monitor stuck in a tree.

Weather can alter so drastically in the field between the few minutes of our 15, 20, or 30 minute measurements. During the field days at the last project in 2017 analyzing the atmospheric conditions around a hydraulic fracture sand mine near the Adam’s farm in Wisconsin, there was less focus on constantly changing weather conditions during our time out in Wisconsin due to the longer sample times with different regional meteorological characteristics. The time periods of measurements were also a major change from last year’s 2-3 day blocks of measurements to the current shorter periods we are measuring. This materialized more in my focus from our ozone concentration readings as a cloud system passing over read-out approximately 15-23 parts per billion of ozone, while a few sunny minutes would reach us up to about 23-30 parts per billion. These were points logged by the Ozone monitor with an averaging of 2 seconds for the read-outs. Further averaging and analysis of this data and the sampling line calibration curve is required before making a justified statement on these concentrations.

In addition to weather, the traffic was another factor to take into account. From passing vehicles, emissions that lead to further speciation of Ozone and NOx we are looking to observed may be changed. As someone who grew up in the city of Chicago, frequently passing traffic was always a given background. The vehicles in areas like this with less concentrated traffic can lead to spikes in our NOx readings, especially on the shorter time frame for each sampling site around the well.

This first day of field work was extremely fruitful as we dove into running through what was effective and what needed more consideration in how we were taking our data. The process definitely had major differences from the last field experience I had, through the amount of time we conducted our measurements and factors that play into this shorter length of time in our measurements. Moving forward we are able to map out our process more clearly and efficiently.