Acid rain sucks, particularly if you run a fancy university with lots of lovely statues outside. If you’d like to try and predict when it’s going to occur, you might like this project from [Mohammad Nihal].
When rain is particularly acidic, it’s usually because of the combination of sulfur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide and moisture in the atmosphere. This combination ends up making sulfuric acid or nitric acid that then falls to the ground as precipitation. The low-pH rain that results can harm ecosystems, melt statues, and just generally give everyone a hard time.
[Mohammed] decided to try and predict acid rain by building a simple device based on an Arduino Nano. It records SO2 levels with an MQ-136 gas sensor, and NO2 levels with an unspecified MEMS-based sensor. There’s also a DHT11 temperature & humidity sensor in the mix, which is important since moisture content plays a role. The Arduino reads these sensors and uses a simple predictive algorithm to create an “Acid Rain Risk Score” that is displayed on a 16×2 character LCD. It’s all wrapped up in a fun 3D printed enclosure that looks like a cloud.
There are some limitations to the device. Namely, it doesn’t necessarily have a great read on atmospheric SO2 and NO2 levels in the atmosphere, particularly at altitudes where rain is formed, because the sensor sits inside the device indoors. However, the basic concept is there, and improvements could certainly be made with some upgrades and further research.
Meh, the science is there but this device won’t work if it’s inside at ground level.
I thought we largely fixed acid rain? I.e. it’s a story of how overcoming denialism can lead to rapid improvement in a global issue.
I wonder if simply measuring the pH of rain would be beneficial? The idea being to capture some rain before you have a downpour.
Obviously it won’t be (very) helpful to turn up to work and realise you had acid rain last night but at least you can take steps to mitigate damage and assume there’s a period of increased risk further rain will be acidic.
not all countries have emissions controls to prevent acid rain.