Search

A UK local authority installed nine AQMesh systems at different points across a busy town, measuring nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at 15 minute intervals, monitoring 24/7. These locations were established monitoring points, where measurements had been taken previously using diffusion tubes, limited to one average reading every few weeks.

Recent co-location comparison trials using the latest AQMesh processing (v4.2.3) have further proven AQMesh performance with impressive R2 values in excess of O.8 and 0.9 for NO2 in Benelux, Slovakia and Spain.

Breathe London preliminary analysis results reveal substantial NO2 pollution reductions after the UK government implemented restrictions to reduce the spread of Covid-19, particularly after social distancing was strongly encouraged on 16 March.

Four AQMesh pods are to be deployed at individual remote monitoring locations near schools in Kitchener, forming a small network to measure levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and carbon dioxide (CO2).

Two AQMesh pods were used to measure NO, NO2, O3 and CO during May and June 2017 at Upplands Motor Stockholm AB car dealership in Sweden, located on the highway between Stockholm city centre and Arlanda airport.

Five AQMesh pods are currently installed around Keflavic airport in Iceland to monitor gases produced by the nearby volcano at Fagradalsfjall, including hydrogen sulphide (H2S), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

On Sunday 13th May 2018, Cardiff Council organised a car-free day in the city’s central area. As a result of this event air quality monitoring data showed an average 69% drop in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – one of the pollutants of greatest public health concern.

A network of 22 AQMesh pods was originally deployed in collaboration with Newcastle University and Newcastle City council to monitor air pollution outside schools near major traffic routes. The main objectives of the study were to determine levels of NO2, PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 - and whether these exceeded the WHO guidelines - as well as estimate children’s exposure to harmful particles.

AQMesh is now able to offer CO2 and H2S within its range of gas options for local air pollution monitoring. The NDIR CO2 sensor, which can be offered within a single AQMesh pod alongside five other gases out of NO, NO2, O3, CO, SO2 or H2S, as well as PM1, PM2.5, PM10, temperature, pressure and humidity, has been developed to deliver a higher performance than those typically used for indoor air quality monitoring.

The Breathe London project has this week released a 3D data visualisation story created by the Environmental Defense Fund Europe and Google.

It’s great to see the team at the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Cambridge using their AQMesh pods for another project, this time in Lagos, Nigeria and Yaoundé, Cameroon.

If you are responsible for air pollution around an oil, gas or industrial site, you have a range of options at different price points. AQMesh offers a cost-effective way to continuously monitor ambient air quality, as frequently as every minute, with readings accessed securely online and user-settable alerts.

The AQMesh team has carried out a test which shows that calibration (scaling) of AQMesh against one, or ideally several, diffusion tubes, is a viable option when no local reference station is available.

An AQMesh pod used in the recent Citi-Sense project in Norway was returned to us at the end of the project, and we were surprised at the condition.

AQMesh has been used in a project at the Port of Kiel, Germany, to measure emissions of nitrous oxides (NOx) and fine particulate matter (PM) around its cruise ship terminal.

A UK local authority measured the difference in local air pollution levels when reopening roads that had previously been closed for social distancing purposes as part of Covid-19 mitigation efforts.

We installed an AQMesh pod on a rural road to see the impact of local road closures and increased traffic but we left it in place and have been able to monitor how the air quality changes from autumn to winter. This time covered changing traffic patterns, wood-burning, bonfire night, the Christmas break and then no traffic, with the road closed by floods. So, what did we see?

The Breathe London pilot, which used 100 AQMesh pods as part of a ground breaking city-wide network of air quality monitoring stations, proved that small sensor monitoring technology can be deployed successfully to give results comparable with those of reference equipment.

Whilst not the only AQMesh pods still in regular use since the product was commercially launched in 2013, two AQMesh pods are still in use in Spain and demonstrate the long life of this small sensor air quality monitoring system.

Recent co-location comparison trials against certified reference equipment continue to prove AQMesh performance and reliability for localised air quality monitoring.

On 9th April The Sunday Times reported that employers have been told they are legally obliged to protect their staff from diesel fumes — and could be sued if workers develop cancer later in life.

Leading small sensor air quality monitor, AQMesh, has recently been shown to work alongside passive samplers and air quality models, as well as complementing reference station networks.

Cleves School in Weybridge, Surrey (UK) has used AQMesh to measure pollution at the primary school’s entrance.

Supporting the aims of Clean Air Day today, 20^th June 2019, the Guardian has published a short film demonstrating the changing levels of pollution that children are exposed to as they walk to school in London.

Extensive research has shown that indoor air quality is often worse than outdoors. Closed system buildings trap harmful particles inside, and external air intakes can bring in more polluted air from outside.

Redmore Environmental have used AQMesh to perform baseline air testing on land at a proposed Energy from Waste (EfW) facility in Heysham, Lancashire (UK).

Smart city projects increasingly seek to include air quality measurements. If city authorities and the public are being asked to act based on air quality readings they must be credible.

AQMesh has an impressive collection of global users and performance results measuring ambient air quality in applications ranging from traffic planning and urban hotspots to industrial fence line monitoring.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has purchased fifty AQMesh pods to measure key air pollution gases and particulate matter across fifty different zip code areas.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that long-term exposure to poor air quality can have the same damaging effect as smoking 20 cigarettes a day, with air pollution shown to be more dangerous than passive smoking.

A new paper published by the American Chemical Society (ACS Sensors) reviews the use of amperometric electrochemical gas sensors for monitoring inorganic gases that affect urban air quality. Written by John Saffell and Ronan Baron of Alphasense, the paper gives a full explanation of how the sensors work, how they have developed and a review of how they have been used.

Situated in the south west of Wales (UK), in a largely rural area bordering the Brecon Beacons, Carmarthenshire’s air quality is predominantly good.

Last month Environmental Defense Fund Europe (EDFE) together with Mayor Sadiq Khan are releasing the second wave of data from Breathe London, an ambitious collaborative project to measure and map air pollution across the capital.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has been monitoring Minnesota’s air quality for a number of years, and it is generally considered to be good. However, MPCA wanted to understand how air pollution varies across small distances in order to minimise vulnerable communities’ exposure to harmful pollutants.

AQMesh is currently being used in a number of air quality monitoring initiatives by a range of users. Across the UK, for which today is its annual Clean Air Day campaign, there are a number of pods deployed outside schools, being used by ambulance services, installed at metal foundries and at railway stations.

Suite à une phase d’évaluation et en raison de sa qualité de mesure, la solution AQMesh a été sélectionnée dans le cadre d’un projet d’asservissement de la ventilation d’un tunnel routier dans la ville de Marseille.

The AQMesh small sensor air quality monitoring system already offers flexibility of monitoring location – through independent power and communications – as well as high data quality and traceability.

Following a successful evaluation phase in 2018, AQMesh small sensor air quality monitoring ‘pods’ have been selected for use in a project to control the ventilation of a road tunnel in the city of Marseille.

North Americans will be well aware of the particularly harsh weather in the early months of 2019, but AQMesh has taken conditions in its stride. The AQMesh stated operating range of -20°C to + 40°C is backed up by long-term operation across a wide range of climates.

We are often asked by customers whether AQMesh can operate in cold conditions. Long-term use at temperatures well below freezing, with ice and snowfall, is indeed challenging. Cold weather operation has been key to AQMesh – improved upon and proven in the field – for over 10 years. The main features, described below, have been most recently been put to the test in Iceland.

Oxford City Council has been managing two AQMesh pods, supplied by Air Monitors Ltd, in order to monitor the impact the new Westgate centre is having on local air quality.

Detailed information on London’s (UK) air pollution is now being published on breathelondon.org, the website for a new collaborative project to paint a clearer picture of the city’s air quality.

AQMesh will be exhibiting at the Air Quality & Emissions show in Telford on 12^th & 13^th October 2022, which this year is running as a live and virtual event. Focussing on air quality and emissions monitoring services, technology and instrumentation, the show offers a variety of industry experts all under one roof, including AQMesh at stand D10.

A UK train operator is carrying out an air quality baselining project at various points around some of the stations it manages. Monitoring using diffusion tubes or passive sampling has been used around rail infrastructure but the aim here is to use near real-time hyperlocal monitoring to show how pollution levels vary minute-by-minute and across spaces accessible by rail passengers.

Technology is critical to so many essential services during the current global COVID-19 crisis, but it is also allowing local air quality to continue to be monitored, in real-time, across the world. Small sensor air quality monitors such as AQMesh pods can use cloud data storage to ensure that air quality information is stored and accessible even when staff are not able to visit equipment.

AQMesh has partnered with Warwick District Council and Stratford District Council to install air quality monitoring pods at six local primary schools, as part of this year’s national Clean Air Day.

AQMesh has been used extensively in and around data centres for two main reasons: obligation to monitor emissions from back-up generators and the risk to copper components from hydrogen sulphide.

The emergence of sensors capable of measuring the gases and particles that make up air pollution, especially in cities and industrial areas, has driven many academic studies which evaluate the sensors and compare performance against reference methodology.

With local councils in England being encouraged to apply for a share of a £7m grant scheme dedicated to ‘reduce the impact of air pollution on public health’, the big question still remains – how can local authorities mitigate air pollution without carrying out hyperlocal monitoring to understand where the problem areas are and identify the pollution sources?

Everyone loves holidays, whether Christmas or anything else, right? So what’s special about ‘air quality’ people? What we get so excited about are ‘free’ experiments, where distinct changes in activity help to peel away the layers of air pollution measured.

Few people know how clean the air is where they live, work, exercise or where their children go to school. Although air quality can be shown to vary significantly over short distances, air pollution is generally measured using a small number of large, expensive and high quality monitoring stations.

In an inter-connected world, air quality is increasingly becoming another measurement made available to the public, but how reliable is the data?

AQMesh has been measuring ozone (O3) using small sensors since 2011 and the readings from the latest generation electrochemical sensor, using AQMesh v4.2.3 processing, as compared to co-located certified reference readings, consistently show an R2 of over 0.9 with an accuracy ±10ppb (20µg/m3).

The team at AQMesh continue to receive many enquiries from smart city initiatives and are concerned that integrators risk undermining entire projects by distributing meaningless or misleading air quality information.

The results of the 2019 AIRLAB Microsensors Challenge* were revealed in Paris on 21^st January and AQMesh was awarded the highest score for accuracy of all products presented for monitoring of outdoor air quality.

At the RSC AAMG event on ‘Air Quality Monitoring: Evolving Issues and New Technologies’ Professor Rod Jones of the University of Cambridge presented a paper showing very encouraging results.

Refinement and development of the AQMesh small sensor air quality monitoring system over many years, and through numerous global co-location comparisons, brings a wealth of unique benefits.

A recent study using a network of five AQMesh pods has found that small sensor systems with a properly managed QA/QC process offer valuable air quality measurements, complementing data from expensive reference equipment.

2022 has seen AQMesh taken up as a proven and flexible air quality monitoring system by more users, including several in mining and construction. New users include mining operators in the Middle East and Africa, and construction companies in Italy, UK and Canada.

A wide range of industrial operators, including mining, construction, ports, landfill and the oil and gas industry, are looking more closely at the air quality on and around their operational sites. This is increasingly driven by legislation, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) ambitions, to establish a baseline, or to understand and manage potential pollution sources.

Data collected as part of the UKRI SPF Clean Air Program has proven that AQMesh out-of-the-box performance for PM2.5 exceeds new US EPA targets, with excellent results for PM1 and PM10 as well.

To illustrate this point, we can tell the story of 16 pods used in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines and Mongolia. AQMesh was chosen for this project, funded by an international bank, coordinated by an international consultancy and procured through a UK distributor.

2023 is set to be a big year for AQMesh’s monitoring of particulate matter, with developments in both hardware and data processing offering improved accuracy across key PM fractions.

AQMesh Product Manager, Tom Townend, will be presenting at the EPA 2023 Air Sensors Quality Assurance Workshop on Wednesday 26^th July at 1pm ET (6pm BST). He will be speaking about our project in Minneapolis and quality control of large sensor networks measuring total volatile organic compounds (TVOC).

2022 marked 10 years of innovation and leadership from AQMesh. To highlight the team’s experience, ongoing forward-thinking and its commitment to pushing the capabilities of small sensor systems, here are the top 10 things AQMesh developed first and refined since it commercially launched in 2012.

There is a major trend towards industrial operators including oil and gas, petrochemicals, construction, mining and transport – rail and ports, as well as roads – wanting to look closely at air pollution on and around their sites.

A new generation of air quality monitors is now being offered to provide localised, real-time air quality readings – but the potential benefit is only just starting to be realised.

Whilst there may be a growth in city-wide communications integration, “big data” and public interest in local air quality, the challenges of monitoring complex atmospheric chemistry have not changed. Integrating “sensors” can sound straightforward but information about air quality around a city must be handled carefully.

Our hydrogen sulphide (H2S) monitoring journey literally started in the sludge lanes of a UK wastewater treatment plant in 2017. Since then, AQMesh has been used effectively in a range of applications.