Project Prairie Grass Experiment Conducted in O'Neill in Nebraska (Dissertation Sample)

Project Prairie Grass (O’Neill, Nebraska)
Author’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Abstract
Project Prairie Grass was a 1956 experiment conducted in O’Neill in Nebraska to study the dispersion of a gas from a point source compared to the diffusion of gases in the atmosphere. As such, it explores the essential characteristics of perpendicular dispersal in the atmospheric surface layer. It traces the history of the diffusion experiments and the findings. The study took place in the 4 000 people population city and brought together researchers from diverse colleges and government departments to actuate the phenomenon. The results and subsequent analysis depicted a close link between the modeled results and the results of the actual study. Nonetheless, the research was limited by a lack of prior data for comparison.
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc38270850 \h 6Background PAGEREF _Toc38270851 \h 7Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc38270852 \h 10Methodology PAGEREF _Toc38270853 \h 14Results and Discussion PAGEREF _Toc38270854 \h 16Calculation of The Eigen quantities PAGEREF _Toc38270855 \h 20Limitations PAGEREF _Toc38270856 \h 26Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc38270857 \h 26References PAGEREF _Toc38270858 \h 27
List of Tables
Table 1. Emission and micrometeorological data for stable runs of the Prairie Grass experiment
Table 2. Observed normalized crosswind-integrated concentration cz (x1, 1.5) Q(sm-2) for stable conditions of the Prairie Grass experiment
Table 3. Number of iterations for convergences of the eigenvalues for run 68 for CONFIG1
Table 4: Number of iterations for convergences of the eigenvalues for run 68 for CONFIG2
List of Figures
Fig 1. Results
Fig 2. Convergence of the predicted normalized crosswind-integrated concentration (sm-2) for run 24 of the prairie Grass experiment
Fig 3. Convergence of the predicted normalized crosswind-integrated concentration (sm-2) for run 68 of the Prairie Grass experiment
Project Prairie Grass
Introduction
During the summer of 1956, a field program was conducted nearby O'Neill, Nebraska, and it was called “Project Prairie Grass.” This topic is interesting because the main aim of this program was to study how the transmission of a tracer gas discharged nonstop at a point source close to the ground level differs from climatological situations. In the course of the research, there were approximately 70 discharges of SO2, and the duration of each was 10 minutes. They were tested at an altitude of 1.5m on curvatures up to 800m downwind from the source. Furthermore, they measured perpendicular profiles at 100 m downwind of the source. The diffusion experimentations were reinforced by micro-climatological information such as wind, temperature as well as moisture profiles.
The project remains one of the most comprehensive atmospheric diffusion research ever done. The data obtained from PPG has been extensively used to check and evaluate concepts of windy vertical dispersions in the atmospheric exterior layer. Advanced research on diffusion theory and experimentation directly helps in resolving several real complications in the atmospheric frontier laver. There have been advances in other fields such as the reduction of air pollution. For instance, developments made in transmission investigation initiate smarter selections of the plant locality, plant structures designs, and stacks, eras of stack discharge, etc. Another example is the advancement that has been made in dispersion investigations in the arena of produce spraying, which led to a better choice of spray heights, spray times, etc.
The diffusion research has brought solutions nearer to several other boundary layer difficulties through the insights obtained. Therefore, the diffusion concept and study, then, offer beyond resolutions to particular air contamination difficulties because they offer a means of refining our understanding of turbulent occurrences. This project involves situation analysis, a series of activities that go from universal instability theories to a precise diffusion theory to verifying the experiments. According to the literature review, a lot of work has been on the development of general turbulence and diffusion hypotheses over the past 25 years. Nonetheless, there is little research done in the gathering of correct diffusion statistics to assist in the assessment of the diffusion theory.
Background
Diffusion experiments started way back during World War II. One of the main reasons that caused Von Braun’s V-2 rocket to be unsuccessful as a firearm for the Nazis was the air activities nearby the earth that kept back the aerial bombs from striking their objects, amongst other problems. Inventors had no clue about the behavior of air roughly 5,000 feet from the ground. Nearly a decade later, they were not anywhere close to having answers. Two other gentlemen who worked for the Air Force, namely Lettau and Loeser, joined Von in this experiment. Lettau and Loeser were considering O’Neill to experiment more on rocketry science. However, the resultant statistics ended up becoming useful in aeronautics, farming, plus foretelling of weather conditions (Manoucheri, 2009).
The Air Force had a problem in testing the performance of their new jets because the air movements could hurt their performance. They wanted to understand how the air close to the ground behaved, its circulation, and how the air became warm and how it cooled. The Air Force took temperature and atmospheric evaluations at base airstrips after a small number of hours. So, they called in Lettau to figure things out. If Lettau’s experiment succeeded, it would give the Air Force criteria that they could follow short of taking runway readings frequently. Ever since the 1930s, Lettau had made an effort to map air activities when he worked at the ‘German Weather Bureau.’ With a different position, he was able to obtain information from different universities, but there were huge disparities because of the different types of land and air.
Therefore, he convinced the Air Force to bring together various university thinkers to one location and use the open air as a large research laboratory to examine plus forecast air movements correctly. He required someplace even, with a breeze that was near-continuous as well as support from a nearby community to offer the scientists accommodation. Therefore, Lettau settled on the tiny city of O’Neill after scrubbing daily news from the ‘National Weather Service’s’ field headquarters (Manoucheri, 2009).
In the 1950s two tries had brought together most of the dynamic micrometeorologists in America plus their apparatuses to a single location in O’Neill, Nebraska. Despite their efforts, they couldn’t offer a solution to the supposition of continuous fluctuation in the bottommost 10 to 20 meters of the atmosphere, regularly identified as the surface layer. This hypothesis was fundamental to formulations of stormy transportation in that stratum. The participating teams could not measure the breeze as well as the variations of the temperature with satisfactory precision to authenticate the premise.
In January 1953, several college and government researchers gathered in Boston to take part in the preparation of the “Great Plains Turbulence Field Program’. They wanted to participate in the micrometeorological study, conducted later that year nearby O'Neill, Nebraska. The projects had many technical issues that the participants needed to handle, such as quantitative dimensions of dispersion. They also didn’t have an acceptable tracer method plus the essential tools to gather tracer testers in stations with a dense network. The ‘Geophysics Research Directorate’ supported the development of two suitable tracer techniques. It would be used for reading the rate of diffusion over a distance of approximately 1m while the tracer was emitted endlessly at a fixed point close to the ground level (Barad, 1958).
The first one was costly; therefore, they chose the second one, which was developed by MIT at its ‘Round Hill Field Station.’ This method required the usage of sulfur dioxide as the tracer. Notably, the tracer technique was established for unceasing emission. Traditionally, most of the investigational work started with the continual point source. The continuous source has been preferred because of the following reasons. The manufacturing of the constant source with reproducible features, testing after testing, was mostly simpler. The numerical clarification of the absorption dimensions at downwind locations was more straightforward, mainly where time-mean attentiveness was set up, as demonstrated in ‘Project Prairie Grass.’ Along with, the purpose of what constitutes relevant climatological statistics as well as the availability of such figures was mostly simpler (Barad, 1958).
These reasons qualified the continuous source as the best choice for the ‘Project Prairie Grass.’ Also, in the diffusion tests, they chose a release time of 10 minutes. They compromised on this time after taking into consideration factors such as the price of tracer vapor, and real-world emanation rates. Also, consideration between close and distant samples, the attractiveness of having objectively unwavering time -mean diffusion configurations in the region downwind from the source.
In the springtime of 1955, they decided to move the trial program from the ‘Round Hill Field Station’ of MIT to a site. It would license the gathering of sulfur dioxi...