Development of Air Quality Boxes Based on Low-Cost Sensor Technology for Ambient Air Quality Monitoring

Abstract

Analyses of the relationships between climate, air substances and health usually concentrate on urban environments because of increased urban temperatures, high levels of air pollution and the exposure of a large number of people compared to rural environments. Ongoing urbanization, demographic ageing and climate change lead to an increased vulnerability with respect to climate-related extremes and air pollution. However, systematic analyses of the specific local-scale characteristics of health-relevant atmospheric conditions and compositions in urban environments are still scarce because of the lack of high-resolution monitoring networks. In recent years, low-cost sensors (LCS) became available, which potentially provide the opportunity to monitor atmospheric conditions with a high spatial resolution and which allow monitoring directly at vulnerable people. In this study, we present the atmospheric exposure low-cost monitoring (AELCM) system for several air substances like ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter, as well as meteorological variables developed by our research group. The measurement equipment is calibrated using multiple linear regression and extensively tested based on a field evaluation approach at an urban background site using the high-quality measurement unit, the atmospheric exposure monitoring station (AEMS) for meteorology and air substances, of our research group. The field evaluation took place over a time span of 4 to 8 months. The electrochemical ozone sensors (SPEC DGS-O3: R2: 0.71–0.95, RMSE: 3.31–7.79 ppb) and particulate matter sensors (SPS30 PM1/PM2.5: R2: 0.96–0.97/0.90–0.94, RMSE: 0.77–1.07 µg/m3/1.27–1.96 µg/m3) showed the best performances at the urban background site, while the other sensors underperformed tremendously (SPEC DGS-NO2, SPEC DGS-CO, MQ131, MiCS-2714 and MiCS-4514). The results of our study show that meaningful local-scale measurements are possible with the former sensors deployed in an AELCM unit.

A Systematic Review for Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution Monitoring Systems Based on Internet of Things

“…Finally, four studies [82,89,96,108] did not provide clear details about the used gateway operations or slaves. Atmel AVR [13] ATSAMD21G18 [36] Waspmote, meshlium [45,109] ATmega328 [16,62] Pycom Gpy [88,111] PIC16F877A [21] 3.5. Answer to RQ5…”

Comprehensive review of the annual haze episode in Northern Thailand

“…A full review on the technical aspects of these sensors has been made by Alfano et al (2020). LCS often include other sensors for the measurement of gaseous pollutants using electrochemical gas sensors (SPEC DGS) and metal oxide gas sensors (MiCS, MQ) recording the electrical conductivity in contaminated air or at the surface of a semiconductor sensitive to gases present in polluted air (Gabel et al, 2022).…”

Identification of the Safe Variation Limits for the Optimization of the Measurements in Low-Cost Electrochemical Air Quality Sensors

“…In IoT systems, a research team [9] placed an array of four electrochemical LCS and, after applying, regression methods (linear regression, multiple linear regression), and a machine learning method, presented satisfactory results. Many research team articles report on the development and applications of air quality, low-cost monitors, and their networks [10][11][12][13][14][15][16].…”