The refinement and development of the AQMesh small sensor air quality monitoring system over many years, and through numerous global co-location comparisons, have brought a wealth of unique benefits, says the firm. As well as a range of comparison datasets across climates from the Middle East to Scandinavia, each AQMesh pod has always been subject to a comprehensive factory set-up, following best practise of co-location comparison with reference equipment.
At the AQMesh factory, a custom-built mobile enclosure houses climate-controlled reference/equivalence analysers sampling air from an ambient ‘cage’ which can hold up to 100 AQMesh pods at a time. As well as sensor characterisation, this allows pod-to-pod precision to also be evaluated at the same time. The reference equipment includes Thermo Scientific 42i for NO, NO2 and NOx, Thermo Scientific 43i for SO2, Ecotech Serinus 10 for O3, Ecotech Serinus 30 for CO as well as the industry standard FIDAS 200 for PM1, PM2.5, PM4 and PM10. The enclosure is maintained at a constant, consistent temperature of 18 +/-2 degrees centigrade all year round, and all analysers are serviced regularly and calibrated themselves before each sensor characterisation batch.
Access to their own reference station, and the ongoing development of AQMesh since it first commercially launched in 2012, has also enabled the team to continually review the product’s long-term performance. Baseline stability of AQMesh’s electrochemical sensors has been proven over many years of independent global co-location trials against certified reference equipment.
This combination of long-standing factory “calibration”, and extensive global co-location comparison field testing now spanning over eight years in real, ambient conditions across a range of environments and climates, and a number of other unique benefits, means AQMesh is arguably the most reliable and accurate small sensor air quality monitoring system available on the market today.
