AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Low-cost Air Quality Monitoring: Characterizing the Real-time Affordable Multi-Pollutant (RAMP) Sensor Package
R. SUBRAMANIAN, Misha Schurman, Bryan Tomko, Jason Gu, Albert A. Presto, Naomi Zimmerman, Sriniwasa Prabhu, Rebecca Tanzer, Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract Number: 340 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Distributed sensing of air quality has been made possible with relatively inexpensive sensors for carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, and particulate matter. However, such sensors suffer from cross-sensitivity to other gases as well as environmental factors like temperature and relative humidity. We have recently developed a new low-cost air quality monitor, the Real-time Affordable Multi-Pollutant (RAMP) sensor package, which measures CO, SO$_2, NO$_2, O$_3, CO$_2, temperature, and RH. PM mass is measured using an external sensor. The AlphaSense OPC-N2 shows some promise, with collocated ambient measurements of two units showing a correlation coefficient of 0.78 and a slope of 0.8, and number concentrations compared well with a TSI optical particle sizer. However, reliability of the OPC-N2 units has been a major concern. Alternative PM measurement approaches are being explored (see “Assessment of compact, real-time PM$_(2.5) and ultrafine particle counting instrumentation with a spatially-distributed network in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania” by Zimmerman et al.) The RAMP transmits all this data to a central web server over a GSM network. We have developed a new calibration technique to properly characterize the sensor response, as well as algorithms for converting sensor response (accounting for interferences) into air quality parameters comparable to conventional monitoring networks. This poster shall present the results of these efforts. As part of various projects, over 50 RAMPs will be deployed in the city of Pittsburgh, PA, in 2016.