Response of eight low-cost particle sensors and consumer devices to typical indoor emission events in a real home (ASHRAE 1756-RP)

Abstract

Many consumer-grade low-cost particle sensors have recently entered the market, potentially providing a means of inexpensively monitoring indoor air quality and eventually being used to control building systems. In this study, we evaluate several such products: three bare sensors (BS) and five integrated devices (ID) containing one or more of these sensors and additional features. We collocated the sensors with reference instruments in a real indoor environment for two and half months. During this time, we conducted 27 particle emission events of several different types (incense, candle, toast, spray, cooking, humidifier and open window). All ID and BS exhibited an ability to respond to different PM sources, although the magnitude of their responses varied. The ratio of the time-integrated signals and peaks of the sensor signals to the reference instruments during each event varied from close to zero to around approximately three. Similarly, correlations between one-minute low-cost sensor data and similar reference instrument data varied widely among the sensors and devices tested, with R² values between near zero and near one observed.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank members of the Project Monitoring Subcommittee (Brent Stephens, Glenn Remington, Paolo Tronville, R. Vijayakumar, and Liping Wang) and members of ASHRAE TC 2.4 for helpful comments. We would also like to thank the manufacturers of ID1 and ID4 for donating products to our study.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by ASHRAE RP-1756 as a cooperative agreement between ASHRAE and The Ohio State University.