Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Laboratory Comparison of Low-Cost Particulate Matter Sensors to Measure Transient Events of Pollution - Part B - Particle Number Concentrations

Florentin Michel Jacques Bulot
* ,
Hugo Savill Russell
ORCID logo ,
Mohsen Rezaei
,
Matthew Stanley Johnson
,
Steven James Ossont
,
Andrew Kevin Richard Morris
ORCID logo ,
Philip James Basford
,
Natasha Hazel Celeste Easton
,
Hazel Louise Mitchell
ORCID logo ,
Gavin Lee Foster
,
Matthew Loxham
ORCID logo ,
Simon James Cox
Version 1 : Received: 19 April 2023 / Approved: 21 April 2023 / Online: 21 April 2023 (09:10:07 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Bulot, F.M.J.; Russell, H.S.; Rezaei, M.; Johnson, M.S.; Ossont, S.J.; Morris, A.K.R.; Basford, P.J.; Easton, N.H.C.; Mitchell, H.L.; Foster, G.L.; Loxham, M.; Cox, S.J. Laboratory Comparison of Low-Cost Particulate Matter Sensors to Measure Transient Events of Pollution—Part B—Particle Number Concentrations. Sensors 2023, 23, 7657. Bulot, F.M.J.; Russell, H.S.; Rezaei, M.; Johnson, M.S.; Ossont, S.J.; Morris, A.K.R.; Basford, P.J.; Easton, N.H.C.; Mitchell, H.L.; Foster, G.L.; Loxham, M.; Cox, S.J. Laboratory Comparison of Low-Cost Particulate Matter Sensors to Measure Transient Events of Pollution—Part B—Particle Number Concentrations. Sensors 2023, 23, 7657.

Abstract

Low-cost particulate matter (PM) sensors offer an excellent opportunity to improve our knowledge about this type of pollution. Their size and their cost, which support multi-node network deployment, along with their temporal resolution, enable them to report fine spatio-temporal resolution for a given area. These sensors have known issues across performance metrics. Generally, the literature focuses on the PM mass concentration reported by these sensors but some models of sensors also report particle number concentrations (PNC) segregated into different PM size bins. In this study, 8 units of each Alphasense OPC-R1, Plantower PMS5003 and Sensirion SPS30 have been exposed, under controlled conditions, to short-lived peaks of PM generated using two different combustion sources of PM, exposing the sensors to different particle size distributions to quantify and better understand the low cost sensors performance across a range of relevant environmental ranges. The PNC reported by the sensors were analysed. This study showed that there is added value in directly using the PNC reported by the sensors instead of the mass concentrations, which could aid the efforts to calibrate these sensors to a known accuracy. It demonstrated that all sensors tested here could track the fine temporal variation of PNC, that the Alphasense OPC-R1 could closely follow the variations of size distribution between the two sources of PM, and it showed that particle size distribution and composition are more impactful on the sensors measurement than relative humidity.

Keywords

low-cost sensors; particle number concentration; laboratory study; fine particles; particulate matter; air pollution

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Pollution

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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