Grantee Research Project Results

Final Report: Black Carbon and UV Particulate Matter, Multi-gas, Multi-pollutant Sensor Platform

EPA Contract Number: 68HERC20C0049
Title: Black Carbon and UV Particulate Matter, Multi-gas, Multi-pollutant Sensor Platform
Investigators: Blair, Jeffrey
Small Business: MicroAeth Corporation dba AethLabs
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: II
Project Period: June 1, 2020 through May 31, 2022 (Extended to May 31, 2023)
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) - Phase II (2020) Recipients Lists
Research Category: SBIR - Air , Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) , SBIR - Air Monitoring and Remote Sensing

Description:

Forest fires are increasing in prevalence and intensity, driving a need for lower cost portable air sensors that can provide first responders, air quality managers, public health officials, and residents with the information they need to make timely decisions around prevention, management, and response. Perhaps the biggest need is for the sensing of particulate matter (PM) smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5), which is a direct biproduct and indicator of wood combustion which, when taken across its sources, has been attributed to millions of premature deaths every year. Yet the fact that countless sources contribute to ambient PM2.5 concentrations means that PM2.5 mass concentration measurements by themselves are not necessarily indicative of air pollution from wildfires.

Laboratory analysis is often used to glean source-specific information from filter-based PM2.5 mass measurements, but this process is costly and cannot be done in real-time. However, two continuously measurable compounds – Black Carbon (BC) and Organic Carbon – often make up substantial portions of total PM2.5 concentrations in near-source biomass and wildfire environments, and so their measurement can be leveraged as partial indicators of both the presence and air quality impacts of wildland fires. It thereby stands to reason that an instrument that measures BC and size-resolved PM (primarily PM1 and PM2.5) would be of great advantage to wildfire-affected residents and policy makers. Moreover, because exposure to the BC component of PM2.5 has been identified as a source of greater relative risk than exposure to general PM2.5 on a per-mass-concentration basis, a monitor suite that allows quantification of the BC/PM2.5 ratio would provide even greater benefit to the health policy and research communities.

Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):

AethLabs is excited to share that we have developed and commercialized both a low-cost instrument to measure PM, total volatile organic compounds (tVOC), and CO2 as well as a research grade, lower cost, portable, miniaturized BC monitor.

Our miniaturized BC monitor was officially released as the microAeth AL30 at the 13th International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere (ICCPA) in July 2023 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, and we expect that the first shipments of this product will occur in October of 2023. AethLabs’ low-cost multi-pollutant monitor will be officially released to the public as Scout SD1 in Europe at the European Aerosol Conference (EAC) in Malaga, Spain in September 2023 and in the United States at the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) Conference in October 2023 in Portland, Oregon. It is expected that the first deliveries of this product will occur in November of 2023.

Additional variants of this miniature lower cost BC monitor are planned for future commercialization in 2024 that will meet the needs of both stationary and personal monitoring in locations with high BC concentrations that would normally limit the operational runtime of the device due to high filter loadings. This variant will be released as the microAeth AL60, which will be the same size and weight but have opto-mechanics that have been optimized for longer duration monitoring, up to 4x longer than the AL30 for low-cost, high density BC networks that may be used in health research, community monitoring, and air quality surveys. In addition to on-person, wearable applications, the AL30 and AL60 are also applicable to UAV/drone and mobile measurement applications.

AethLabs has also produced a new Modular IOT MCU Interface and Platform that integrates these new products with a new website and server backend for IOT device management, data management, and data visualization.

Conclusions:

Overall, AethLabs’ work under this project funding has led to the development and commercialization of multiple products that stand to improve the state of wildland fire air quality monitoring and policy, and we are excited by the development of several new variants that is already underway.

SBIR Phase I:

Black Carbon and UV Particulate Matter, Multi-gas, Multi-pollutantSensor Platform  | Final Report