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Potentialities and Limits of Low-Cost Sensors for Air Quality Monitoring
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Potentialities and Limits of Low-Cost Sensors for Air Quality Monitoring

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensors Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2024) | Viewed by 4944

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Domenico Suriano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
ENEA—Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment, Sustainable Development Department, Research Center of Brindisi, 72100 Brindisi, Italy
Interests: air quality monitoring; air pollutant monitors; low-cost sensors for air pollutant monitoring; sensor networks for air quality monitoring; calibration of gas sensors; remote sensing; internet of things; low-cost systems for air pollutant personal exposure; indoor air quality portable monitors; wireless sensors; design of low-cost air quality monitors; indoor air pollution; calibration models for air quality sensors; air pollutant real time monitoring; state-of-art in real-time air quality monitoring through low-cost technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the availability of low-cost sensors (LCSs) and low-cost monitors (LCMs) based on LCSs for air quality monitoring has attracted the interest of scientists, academic communities, and professionals. Although the scientific community has raised concerns about their data quality, LCSs and LCMs are still considered a possible alternative to traditional monitoring stations due to their cheapness, compactness, and lack of maintenance costs. These appealing features have pushed the use of these sensors for PM, NO2, CO, O3, H2S, SO2, VOC, and other pollutant gases in various application areas, such as outdoor air pollution measurements, indoor air quality monitoring, gas leak control in industrial processes, malodor detection, and the monitoring of gas emissions in agricultural activities. On the other hand, it is also well known that LCSs are composed of technologies that put limits on their performance and data quality. Low selectivity, gas cross-sensitivity, and dependence on environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity decrease the reliability of the measurements performed by such devices. These issues have been addressed by the scientific community by exploring the best procedures for identifying the LCMs/LCSs most suitable application areas, by setting up different calibration techniques, and by studying new approaches for improving the performance of LCSs/LCMs. This Special Issue aims to be a collection of scientific articles and/or reviews concerning LCS/LSM calibration techniques, LCS/LCM evaluations, use cases in different application areas, and networks of LCMs/LCSs, algorithms, or techniques for improving their performance, all which can help us to better understand the potentialities and limits of these emerging devices. Thus, original scientific articles or review papers may include, but are not limited to:

  • LCM/LCS evaluation studies;
  • LCM/LCS calibration techniques;
  • LCM/LCS application areas and use cases;
  • Techniques or procedures for improving LCM/LCS performance;
  • LCM/LCS networks;
  • Design and implementation of new LCMs based on LCSs;
  • Design and implementation of new LCSs.

Dr. Domenico Suriano
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 11614 KiB  
Article
SchoolAIR: A Citizen Science IoT Framework Using Low-Cost Sensing for Indoor Air Quality Management
by Nelson Barros, Pedro Sobral, Rui S. Moreira, João Vargas, Ana Fonseca, Isabel Abreu and Maria Simas Guerreiro
Sensors 2024, 24(1), 148; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s24010148 - 27 Dec 2023
Viewed by 997
Abstract
Indoor air quality (IAQ) problems in school environments are very common and have significant impacts on students’ performance, development and health. Indoor air conditions depend on the adopted ventilation practices, which in Mediterranean countries are essentially based on natural ventilation controlled through manual [...] Read more.
Indoor air quality (IAQ) problems in school environments are very common and have significant impacts on students’ performance, development and health. Indoor air conditions depend on the adopted ventilation practices, which in Mediterranean countries are essentially based on natural ventilation controlled through manual window opening. Citizen science projects directed to school communities are effective strategies to promote awareness and knowledge acquirement on IAQ and adequate ventilation management. Our multidisciplinary research team has developed a framework—SchoolAIR—based on low-cost sensors and a scalable IoT system architecture to support the improvement of IAQ in schools. The SchoolAIR framework is based on do-it-yourself sensors that continuously monitor air temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of carbon dioxide and particulate matter in school environments. The framework was tested in the classrooms of University Fernando Pessoa, and its deployment and proof of concept took place in a high school in the north of Portugal. The results obtained reveal that CO2 concentrations frequently exceed reference values during classes, and that higher concentrations of particulate matter in the outdoor air affect IAQ. These results highlight the importance of real-time monitoring of IAQ and outdoor air pollution levels to support decision-making in ventilation management and assure adequate IAQ. The proposed approach encourages the transfer of scientific knowledge from universities to society in a dynamic and active process of social responsibility based on a citizen science approach, promoting scientific literacy of the younger generation and enhancing healthier, resilient and sustainable indoor environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Potentialities and Limits of Low-Cost Sensors for Air Quality Monitoring)
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12 pages, 2059 KiB  
Communication
Application of an Ultra-Low-Cost Passive Sampler for Light-Absorbing Carbon in Mongolia
by Bujin Bekbulat, Pratyush Agrawal, Ryan W. Allen, Michael Baum, Buyantushig Boldbaatar, Lara P. Clark, Jargalsaikhan Galsuren, Perry Hystad, Christian L’Orange, Sreekanth Vakacherla, John Volckens and Julian D. Marshall
Sensors 2023, 23(21), 8977; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s23218977 - 05 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1234
Abstract
Low-cost, long-term measures of air pollution concentrations are often needed for epidemiological studies and policy analyses of household air pollution. The Washington passive sampler (WPS), an ultra-low-cost method for measuring the long-term average levels of light-absorbing carbon (LAC) air pollution, uses digital images [...] Read more.
Low-cost, long-term measures of air pollution concentrations are often needed for epidemiological studies and policy analyses of household air pollution. The Washington passive sampler (WPS), an ultra-low-cost method for measuring the long-term average levels of light-absorbing carbon (LAC) air pollution, uses digital images to measure the changes in the reflectance of a passively exposed paper filter. A prior publication on WPS reported high precision and reproducibility. Here, we deployed three methods to each of 10 households in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: one PurpleAir for PM2.5; two ultrasonic personal aerosol samplers (UPAS) with quartz filters for the thermal-optical analysis of elemental carbon (EC); and two WPS for LAC. We compared multiple rounds of 4-week-average measurements. The analyses calibrating the LAC to the elemental carbon measurement suggest that 1 µg of EC/m3 corresponds to 62 PI/month (R2 = 0.83). The EC-LAC calibration curve indicates an accuracy (root-mean-square error) of 3.1 µg of EC/m3, or ~21% of the average elemental carbon concentration. The RMSE values observed here for the WPS are comparable to the reported accuracy levels for other methods, including reference methods. Based on the precision and accuracy results shown here, as well as the increased simplicity of deployment, the WPS may merit further consideration for studying air quality in homes that use solid fuels. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Potentialities and Limits of Low-Cost Sensors for Air Quality Monitoring)
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18 pages, 12879 KiB  
Article
An Investigation on the Possible Application Areas of Low-Cost PM Sensors for Air Quality Monitoring
by Domenico Suriano and Mario Prato
Sensors 2023, 23(8), 3976; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s23083976 - 14 Apr 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2204
Abstract
In recent years, the availability on the market of low-cost sensors (LCSs) and low-cost monitors (LCMs) for air quality monitoring has attracted the interest of scientists, communities, and professionals. Although the scientific community has raised concerns about their data quality, they are still [...] Read more.
In recent years, the availability on the market of low-cost sensors (LCSs) and low-cost monitors (LCMs) for air quality monitoring has attracted the interest of scientists, communities, and professionals. Although the scientific community has raised concerns about their data quality, they are still considered a possible alternative to regulatory monitoring stations due to their cheapness, compactness, and lack of maintenance costs. Several studies have performed independent evaluations to investigate their performance, but a comparison of the results is difficult due to the different test conditions and metrics adopted. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tried to provide a tool for assessing the possible uses of LCSs or LCMs by publishing guidelines to assign suitable application areas for each of them on the basis of the mean normalized bias (MNB) and coefficient of variance (CV) indicators. Until today, very few studies have analyzed LCS performance by referring to the EPA guidelines. This research aimed to understand the performance and the possible application areas of two PM sensor models (PMS5003 and SPS30) on the basis of the EPA guidelines. We computed the R2, RMSE, MAE, MNB, CV, and other performance indicators and found that the coefficient of determination (R2) ranged from 0.55 to 0.61, while the root mean squared error (RMSE) ranged from 11.02 µg/m3 to 12.09 µg/m3. Moreover, the application of a correction factor to include the humidity effect produced an improvement in the performance of the PMS5003 sensor models. We also found that, based on the MNB and CV values, the EPA guidelines assigned the SPS30 sensors to the “informal information about the presence of the pollutant” application area (Tier I), while PMS5003 sensors were assigned to the “supplemental monitoring of regulatory networks” area (Tier III). Although the usefulness of the EPA guidelines is acknowledged, it appears that improvements are necessary to increase their effectiveness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Potentialities and Limits of Low-Cost Sensors for Air Quality Monitoring)
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