UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS

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2024-11-24 11:43
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2021 Meeting


Section: Atmosphere and Earth Science; Environment Protection


Title:
Low-cost experimental system for independent air quality monitoring


Authors:
Alexandru TUDOR (1,2), Andreea CALCAN (2), Gabriela IORGA (1,3)


Affiliation:
1) University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, Atomistilor 405, Magurele, 077125 Bucharest, Romania

2) National Institute for Aerospace Research ‘Elie Carafoli’ INCAS, Environmental Aerodynamics, Bd. Iuliu Maniu 220, 061126, Bucharest, Romania

3) University of Bucharest, Department of Physical Chemistry, Bd. Regina Elisabeta 4-12, 030018 Bucharest, Romania


E-mail
t_alex_s@yahoo.com


Keywords:
air quality, air pollutants, Arduino, low-cost station


Abstract:
Urban air quality is nowadays a major issue for public health, especially in developing metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, the process of air quality monitoring involves expensive measuring instruments. Currently, the public market is abundant in many sensors for various air pollutant measurements. These sensors claim to be sufficiently accurate to perform air pollutant measurements and aim to compete the reference sensors. The purpose of present study was to develop a low-cost station using some sensors currently available on the market and to study its performance and limitations. The station made is based on the open-source Arduino platform and has a series of sensors that measure meteorological parameters (temperature, pressure, relative humidity, dew point temperature) and the mass concentrations of particulate matter fractions PM10, PM2.5 and PM1. As carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas, we also included a sensor to measure CO2 concentrations. The low-cost station was then used for measurements in various areas in the city of Bucharest (kerbside, parks, pedestrian area in the old city). Some measurements were performed in the Bucharest suburban area (Magurele) and even in some selected rooms of the Faculty of Physics. All measurements with the newly made low-cost station were performed in parallel with instruments approved for this purpose to study its effectiveness.


Acknowledgement:
Authors acknowledge the support from INCAS through NUCLEU și ROMEO 20-034 programs and from EEA-RO-NO-0423 project, contract no 31/2020.