Electrochemical gas sensing module combined with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for air quality monitoring

Abstract

The issue of air pollution and the monitoring of air quality is a very serious problem in today's society. This problem is basically caused by human in activities related to industry, construction, transport, etc. High pollution values have become an important risk factor for the health of citizens. Measuring pollution for air quality control is not an easy task, as it requires highly specialized equipment, working under special conditions, which makes reference systems bulky and costly installations. To this must be added the disadvantages of measuring in areas with little or no accessibility. The aim of this work is to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with low-cost sensors to monitor air quality both on the move and stationary in a position that is difficult to access. It is equipped with sensors for carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), nitrogen monoxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) measurement. The electronic instrumentation has been developed in the laboratory for this application and it is optimized to minimize interference between the different devices. It also incorporates a pneumatic pump and a tube for air sampling outside the influence of the propellers. In this study, a series of measurements of the UAV were carried out at a stationary location next to a reference station in order to perform the calibration of the sensors. Once calibrated, a series of measurements have been made in motion. The experimental results show the accuracy of the measurements of the proposed prototype as well as its robustness in-flight measurements.