Performance evaluation of ozone and particulate matter sensors

As public awareness and concern about air quality grows, companies and researchers have begun to develop small, low-cost sensors to measure local air quality. These sensors have been used in citizen science projects, in distributed networks within cities, and in combination with public health studies on asthma and other air-quality-associated diseases. However, sensor long-term performance under different environmental conditions and pollutant levels is not fully understood. In addition, further evaluation is needed for other long-term performance trends such as performance among sensors of the same model, comparison between sensors from different companies and comparison of sensor data to federal equivalence or reference method (FEM/FRM) measurements. A 10-month evaluation of two popular particulate matter (PM) sensors, Dylos DC1100 and AirBeam, and a popular ozone (O₃) sensor, Aeroqual 500, was performed as part of this study. Data from these sensors were compared to each other and to FEM/FRM data and local meteorology. The study took place at the Houston Regional Monitoring (HRM) site 3, located between the Houston Ship Channel and Houston's urban center. PM sensor performance was found to vary in time, with multivariate analysis, binning of data by meteorological parameter, and machine learning techniques able to account for some but not all performance variations. PM type (i.e., size distribution, fiber-flake-spheroid shape and black-brown-white color) likely played a role in the changing sensor performance. Triplicate individual Aeroqual O₃ sensors tracked reasonably well with the FEM data for most of the measurement period but had irregular periods of O₃ measurement offset. While the FEM data indicated 4 days where ozone levels were above the NAAQS, the Aeroqual ozone sensors indicated a substantially higher number of days, ranging from 9 to 16 for the three sensors.Implications: This paper evaluated the long-term performance of several commercial low-cost sensors (PM_2.5 and ozone) as compared to federal equivalence method (FEM) monitors under a range of meteorological and air quality conditions. PM_2.5 sensors performed well on low humidity days with winds indicative of sea salt or dust PM sources but had poor correlation with FEM data under other conditions. Two types of PM sensors were studied (Dylos 1100 and AirBeam) and data only correlated well between sensors of the same type. Sensor networks with multiple PM sensor types would not be as useful for comparative purposes as sensor networks of the same type. Relative humidity corrections alone did not increase sensor agreement with FEM to acceptable levels, specific information about PM sources and sensor response in the area measured is needed. Low-cost ozone sensors tested (Aeroqual) performed well but were biased high and overestimated days above ozone NAAQS.