Investigating a Low-Cost Dryer Designed for Low-Cost PM Sensors Measuring Ambient Air Quality

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Abstract

Air pollution in urban areas is a huge concern that demands an efficient air quality control to ensure health quality standards. The hotspots can be located by increasing spatial distribution of ambient air quality monitoring for which the low-cost sensors can be used. However, it is well-known that many factors influence their results. For low-cost Particulate Matter (PM) sensors, high relative humidity can have a significant impact on data quality. In order to eliminate or reduce the impact of high relative humidity on the results obtained from low-cost PM sensors, a low-cost dryer was developed and its effectiveness was investigated. For this purpose, a test chamber was designed, and low-cost PM sensors as well as professional reference devices were installed. A vaporizer regulated the humid conditions in the test chamber. The low-cost dryer heated the sample air with a manually adjustable intensity depending on the voltage. Different voltages were tested to find the optimum one with least energy consumption and maximum drying efficiency. The low-cost PM sensors with and without the low-cost dryer were compared. The experimental results verified that using the low-cost dryer reduced the influence of relative humidity on the low-cost PM sensor results.

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Air pollution and lung cancer incidence in 17 European cohorts: prospective analyses from the European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE).

Ole Raaschou-Nielsen, Zorana J. Andersen, Rob Beelen … (2013)

Ambient air pollution is suspected to cause lung cancer. We aimed to assess the association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and lung cancer incidence in European populations. This prospective analysis of data obtained by the European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects used data from 17 cohort studies based in nine European countries. Baseline addresses were geocoded and we assessed air pollution by land-use regression models for particulate matter (PM) with diameter of less than 10 μm (PM10), less than 2·5 μm (PM2·5), and between 2·5 and 10 μm (PMcoarse), soot (PM2·5absorbance), nitrogen oxides, and two traffic indicators. We used Cox regression models with adjustment for potential confounders for cohort-specific analyses and random effects models for meta-analyses. The 312 944 cohort members contributed 4 013 131 person-years at risk. During follow-up (mean 12·8 years), 2095 incident lung cancer cases were diagnosed. The meta-analyses showed a statistically significant association between risk for lung cancer and PM10 (hazard ratio [HR] 1·22 [95% CI 1·03-1·45] per 10 μg/m(3)). For PM2·5 the HR was 1·18 (0·96-1·46) per 5 μg/m(3). The same increments of PM10 and PM2·5 were associated with HRs for adenocarcinomas of the lung of 1·51 (1·10-2·08) and 1·55 (1·05-2·29), respectively. An increase in road traffic of 4000 vehicle-km per day within 100 m of the residence was associated with an HR for lung cancer of 1·09 (0·99-1·21). The results showed no association between lung cancer and nitrogen oxides concentration (HR 1·01 [0·95-1·07] per 20 μg/m(3)) or traffic intensity on the nearest street (HR 1·00 [0·97-1·04] per 5000 vehicles per day). Particulate matter air pollution contributes to lung cancer incidence in Europe. European Community's Seventh Framework Programme. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Can commercial low-cost sensor platforms contribute to air quality monitoring and exposure estimates?

Nuria Castell, Franck R Dauge, Philipp Schneider … (2017)

The emergence of low-cost, user-friendly and very compact air pollution platforms enable observations at high spatial resolution in near-real-time and provide new opportunities to simultaneously enhance existing monitoring systems, as well as engage citizens in active environmental monitoring. This provides a whole new set of capabilities in the assessment of human exposure to air pollution. However, the data generated by these platforms are often of questionable quality. We have conducted an exhaustive evaluation of 24 identical units of a commercial low-cost sensor platform against CEN (European Standardization Organization) reference analyzers, evaluating their measurement capability over time and a range of environmental conditions. Our results show that their performance varies spatially and temporally, as it depends on the atmospheric composition and the meteorological conditions. Our results show that the performance varies from unit to unit, which makes it necessary to examine the data quality of each node before its use. In general, guidance is lacking on how to test such sensor nodes and ensure adequate performance prior to marketing these platforms. We have implemented and tested diverse metrics in order to assess if the sensor can be employed for applications that require high accuracy (i.e., to meet the Data Quality Objectives defined in air quality legislation, epidemiological studies) or lower accuracy (i.e., to represent the pollution level on a coarse scale, for purposes such as awareness raising). Data quality is a pertinent concern, especially in citizen science applications, where citizens are collecting and interpreting the data. In general, while low-cost platforms present low accuracy for regulatory or health purposes they can provide relative and aggregated information about the observed air quality.

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Particulate matter, air quality and climate: lessons learned and future needs

S. Fuzzi, U Baltensperger, K. Carslaw … (2015)

The literature on atmospheric particulate matter (PM), or atmospheric aerosol, has increased enormously over the last 2 decades and amounts now to some 1500–2000 papers per year in the refereed literature. This is in part due to the enormous advances in measurement technologies, which have allowed for an increasingly accurate understanding of the chemical composition and of the physical properties of atmospheric particles and of their processes in the atmosphere. The growing scientific interest in atmospheric aerosol particles is due to their high importance for environmental policy. In fact, particulate matter constitutes one of the most challenging problems both for air quality and for climate change policies. In this context, this paper reviews the most recent results within the atmospheric aerosol sciences and the policy needs, which have driven much of the increase in monitoring and mechanistic research over the last 2 decades. The synthesis reveals many new processes and developments in the science underpinning climate–aerosol interactions and effects of PM on human health and the environment. However, while airborne particulate matter is responsible for globally important influences on premature human mortality, we still do not know the relative importance of the different chemical components of PM for these effects. Likewise, the magnitude of the overall effects of PM on climate remains highly uncertain. Despite the uncertainty there are many things that could be done to mitigate local and global problems of atmospheric PM. Recent analyses have shown that reducing black carbon (BC) emissions, using known control measures, would reduce global warming and delay the time when anthropogenic effects on global temperature would exceed 2 °C. Likewise, cost-effective control measures on ammonia, an important agricultural precursor gas for secondary inorganic aerosols (SIA), would reduce regional eutrophication and PM concentrations in large areas of Europe, China and the USA. Thus, there is much that could be done to reduce the effects of atmospheric PM on the climate and the health of the environment and the human population. A prioritized list of actions to mitigate the full range of effects of PM is currently undeliverable due to shortcomings in the knowledge of aerosol science; among the shortcomings, the roles of PM in global climate and the relative roles of different PM precursor sources and their response to climate and land use change over the remaining decades of this century are prominent. In any case, the evidence from this paper strongly advocates for an integrated approach to air quality and climate policies.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Klaus Schäfer: Role: Academic Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sensors (Basel)

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sensors (Basel)

Journal ID (publisher-id): sensors

Title: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)

Publisher: MDPI

ISSN (Electronic): 1424-8220

Publication date (Electronic): 26 January 2021

Publication date Collection: February 2021

Volume: 21

Issue: 3

Electronic Location Identifier: 804

Affiliations

Department of Flue Gas Cleaning and Air Quality Control, Institute of Combustion and Power Plant Technology (IFK), University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 23, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany; freddernesto@ 123456gmail.com (F.E.M.M.); bernd.laquai@ 123456ifk.uni-stuttgart.de (B.L.); ulrich.vogt@ 123456ifk.uni-stuttgart.de (U.V.)

Author notes

[* ]Correspondence: abdul.samad@ 123456ifk.uni-stuttgart.de

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Abdul Samad https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9862-9354

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Publisher ID: sensors-21-00804

DOI: 10.3390/s21030804

PMC ID: 7865657

PubMed ID: 33530337

SO-VID: e8ff42f1-e9f0-489e-bac9-d7b69f2ba1fd

License:

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Investigating a Low-Cost Dryer Designed for Low-Cost PM Sensors Measuring Ambient Air Quality

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Pneumonia, sex, and the environment

Most cited references 30

Air pollution and lung cancer incidence in 17 European cohorts: prospective analyses from the European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE).

Can commercial low-cost sensor platforms contribute to air quality monitoring and exposure estimates?

Particulate matter, air quality and climate: lessons learned and future needs

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