University of Utah, Department of Chemical Engineering, 3290 MEB, 50 S. Central Campus Dr., Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
Kaufco Consulting, LLC., 409 East Corner Bridge Lane, Draper, UT, United States.
Environ Pollut. 2019 Dec;255(Pt 1):113131. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113131. Epub 2019 Aug 31.
Low-cost particulate matter (PM) air quality sensors are becoming widely available and are being increasingly deployed in ambient and home/workplace environments due to their low cost, compactness, and ability to provide more highly resolved spatiotemporal PM concentrations. However, the PM data from these sensors are often of questionable quality, and the sensors need to be characterized individually for the environmental conditions under which they will be making measurements. In this study, we designed and assessed a cost-effective (∼$700) calibration chamber capable of continuously providing a uniform PM concentration simultaneously to multiple low-cost PM sensors and robust calibration relationships that are independent of sensor position. The chamber was designed and evaluated with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model and a rigorous experimental protocol. We then used this new chamber to calibrate 242 Plantower PMS 3003 sensors from two production lots (Batches I and II) with two aerosol types: ammonium nitrate (for Batches I and II) and alumina oxide (for Batch I). Our CFD models and experiments demonstrated that the chamber is capable of providing uniform PM concentration to 8 PM sensors at once within 6% error and with excellent reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient > 0.771). The study identified two malfunctioning sensors and showed that the remaining sensors had high linear correlations with a DustTrak monitor that was calibrated for each aerosol type (R > 0.978). Finally, the results revealed statistically significant differences between the responses of Batches I and II sensors to the same aerosol (P-value<0.001) and the Batch I sensors to the two different aerosol types (P-value<0.001). This chamber design and evaluation protocol can provide a useful tool for those interested in systematic laboratory characterization of low-cost PM sensors.
低成本的颗粒物(PM)空气质量传感器由于其成本低、体积小且能够提供更高分辨率的时空 PM 浓度,因此在环境和家庭/工作场所中得到了越来越广泛的应用。然而,这些传感器的 PM 数据质量往往存在问题,并且需要针对其将进行测量的环境条件对传感器进行单独的特性描述。在本研究中,我们设计并评估了一种具有成本效益(约 700 美元)的校准室,该校准室能够同时连续向多个低成本 PM 传感器提供均匀的 PM 浓度,并具有与传感器位置无关的稳健校准关系。该腔室是根据计算流体动力学(CFD)模型和严格的实验方案设计和评估的。然后,我们使用这个新的腔室来校准两个生产批次(批次 I 和 II)的 242 个 Plantower PMS 3003 传感器,使用两种气溶胶类型:硝酸铵(用于批次 I 和 II)和氧化铝(用于批次 I)。我们的 CFD 模型和实验表明,该腔室能够在 6%的误差范围内同时向 8 个 PM 传感器提供均匀的 PM 浓度,并且具有出色的可靠性(组内相关系数>0.771)。该研究确定了两个故障传感器,并表明其余传感器与每个气溶胶类型都经过校准的 DustTrak 监测器具有高度的线性相关性(R>0.978)。最后,结果表明批次 I 和 II 传感器对相同气溶胶的响应存在统计学上的显著差异(P 值<0.001),以及批次 I 传感器对两种不同气溶胶类型的响应存在统计学上的显著差异(P 值<0.001)。该腔室设计和评估方案可为有兴趣对低成本 PM 传感器进行系统实验室特性描述的人员提供有用的工具。