Air Quality Monitoring in offices and schools
Poor air quality is a silent threat to health, especially indoors where we spend most of our time. WHO estimates that there are around 4.2 million premature deaths associated with air pollution .
In environments such as meeting rooms or classrooms, the greatest pollutants are Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and CO2 , the latter is correlated with ventilation . Although it is not toxic in normal concentrations, it does cause a negative impact on mental concentration, mood and cognitive performance.
Various studies have measured the impact of increased CO2 concentration on cognitive response, showing that it can be significantly affected for various tasks as illustrated in Figure 1. For example, considering strategic decisions making, results are up to 80% worse when the CO2 level goes from 550ppm to 1400ppm.
Furthermore, the CO2 level is an evident measure of the level of air recirculation, which is related to the risk of contagion from airborne infections, as occurs with certain viruses and bacteria, and could be the case of COVID-19.
See more information about the airborne transmission of COVID here:
- A group of 239 scientists says there’s growing evidence covid-19 is airborne
- If the coronavirus is really airborne, we might be fighting it the wrong way
According to several studies, the rate of reproduction of a pathogen is related to the concentration of CO2, starting to be relevant above 1000ppm. In addition, from 4 occupants onwards in a closed space, adding more occupants has almost any influence on the risk (Figure 2).
Therefore, monitoring air quality is essential to create comfort and improve activity in offices and schools, in addition to measuring the risk of airborne contagion. For that, ASHRAE recommends CO2 concentration to be less than 1000ppm .
In addition, temperature and humidity are two other parameters that affect comfort. ASHRAE standards specify ideal comfort ranges at 20 to 23.5 ℃ and 40 to 60% relative humidity in winter and 23 to 25.5 ℃ and 40 to 60% relative humidity in summer.
Affordable Monitoring with AM102 LoRa sensor
AM102 LoRa sensor
The Ursalink AM102 IoT unit can monitor temperature, humidity, CO2, TVOC, barometric pressure as well as lighting and presence / movement . It has a e-ink screen that reports the parameters, with an elegant and discreet design.
The information is sent using LoRaWAN low consumption wide range protocols, which allow a simple installation with alkaline batteries type AA and a duration of one year. Additionally, with a single Gateway or Receiving Station, a typical office or school would be covered.
The data would be managed in our Cloud platform IoTailor, which would allow creating dashboards for different users, alarms and automatic reports, even adjustments to the ventilation system.
Features:
- Without electrical installation, with 2 AA alkaline batteries of one year.
- Anti-reflective e-ink panel
- No need for SIM card
- Device management platform from 1 EUR per month per device.
References
- https://www.pdx.edu/green-building/sites/www.pdx.edu.green-building/files/Reading%205%20-%20Rudnick%20Milton.pdf
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-019-0071-6.pdf?proof=true&draft=collection
- https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and-dumber/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26273786
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412018312807