— In this paper, we first develop a low-cost surfacebased air pollutants measurement system for the real-time air
pollution monitoring and forecasting applications. Then, we
compare the performance achieved by the proposed system in
real-time urban environment with currently used static monitoring stations by the governmental environmental protection
agency (EPA). The proposed design uses particulate matter,
humidity, and temperature sensors to measure the values of
the air pollutant that determines the value of the Air Quality
Index (AQI). The SD storage device is interfaced with the
system to store the large amount of data sensed by the system.
The Arduino UNO-based processing unit integrates with the
sensing units to process and control the sensed air pollutants
data. The proposed system is deployed in indoors and outdoor
environment in under served minority communities in big cities
to illustrate real-time environmental pollution measurement and
monitoring applications. The system can measure, monitor and
alert the level of PM2.5 and PM10 components of the AQI
as they are often the main pollutant that determines the AQI
value. The performance of the proposed system compares with
the expensive data logger-based EPA-approved LDEQ sensorsbased air quality monitoring system. Our analysis shows that
the measurement and monitoring performance of the proposed
system is comparable with the EPA-approved LDEQ sensorsbased air quality monitoring system. The analysis also shows
that there is a spatial and temporal variation of PM2.5 and
PM10 values even for sites that are less than a mile apart.
The interaction interphase of the system is simpler and easier
to use as compared with bulky display systems in traditional
EPA-based monitoring systems. In contrast with the traditional
data logger-based system, the proposed system is smaller and
quicker to deploy to test specific air pollutants in interested
urban and rural locations .
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Laboratory Chamber Evaluation of Flow Air Quality Sensor PM2.5 and PM10 Measurements
The emergence of low-cost air quality sensors as viable tools for the monitoring of air quality at population and individual levels necessitates the evaluation of these instruments. The Flow air quality tracker, a product of Plume Labs, is one such sensor. To evaluate these sensors, we assessed 34 of them in a controlled laboratory setting by exposing them to PM10 and PM2.5 and compared the response with Plantower A003 measurements. The overall coefficient of determination (R2) of measured PM2.5 was 0.76 and of PM10 it was 0.73, but the Flows’ accuracy improved after each introduction of incense. Overall, these findings suggest that the Flow can be a useful air quality monitoring tool in air pollution areas with higher concentrations, when incorporated into other monitoring frameworks and when used in aggregate. The broader environmental implications of this work are that it is possible for individuals and groups to monitor their individual exposure to particulate matter pollution.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1828910
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10347837
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
- Volume:
- 19
- Issue:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 1660-4601
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 7340
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127340
