Field Evaluation of Polymer Capacitive Humidity Sensors for Bowen Ratio Energy Balance Flux Measurements.docVIP

Sensors 2010, 10, 7748-7771; doi:10.3390/s100807748 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Article Field Evaluation of Polymer Capacitive Humidity Sensors for Bowen Ratio Energy Balance Flux Measurements Michael J. Savage Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 3201, South Africa; E-Mail: savage@ukzn.ac.za; Tel.: +27-33-260-5514 Received: 28 June 2010; in revised form: 20 July 2010 / Accepted: 5 August 2010 / Published: 20 August 2010 Abstract: The possibility of reliable, reasonably accurate and relatively inexpensive estimates of sensible heat and latent energy fluxes was investigated using a commercial combination thin-film polymer capacitive relative humidity and adjacent temperature sensor instrument. Long-term and unattended water vapour pressure profile difference measurements using low-power combination instruments were compared with those from a cooled dewpoint mirror hygrometer, the latter often used with Bowen ratio energy balance (BREB) systems. An error analysis, based on instrument relative humidity and temperature errors, was applied for various capacitive humidity instrument models. The main disadvantage of a combination capacitive humidity instrument is that two measurements, relative humidity and temperature, are required for estimation of water vapour pressure as opposed to one for a dewpoint hygrometer. In a laboratory experiment using an automated procedure, water vapour pressure differences generated using a reference dewpoint generator were measured using a commercial model (Dew-10) dewpoint hygrometer and a combination capacitive humidity instrument. The laboratory measurement comparisons showed that, potentially, an inexpensive model combination capacitive humidity instrument (CS500 or HMP50), or for improved results a slightly mor