Atmospheric Air Analyzer

Localized air quality data acquisition and analysis to detect, track and alert users about pollution hotspots and recommends various solutions to avoid them

Foreword

The journey of this project began during a 'Design Thinking' project with a motive to design a system for measurement of localized Air Quality data for detecting pollution hotspots and alerting commuters of the same. The idea was to deploy large number of low cost devices across a geographic location to get this data, analyze it and use it for traffic management and city planning. Although quite visionary and ambitious, this project received a lot of appreciation at various levels and fared well in various competitions, it couldn't really move into the implementation phase. Lack of funds, expertise and less access to technology, hampered the progress of the project.

ABOUT

There has been a significant increase in the concentration of gaseous and particulate pollutants in the atmosphere since the start of the 20th century, demarcated by the great industrial revolution in India. With the industrial revolution, flourished the concept of being able to travel in motor vehicles by road that were run on combustible fuel and slashing down forests to build these “roads” to be traveled on. Since then, until this very moment, the quality of air being inhaled by humans is gradually degrading by the minute, vehicular traffic being one of the major contributors along with industrialization and globalization. An increase in vehicle density on roads leads to an increase in traffic congestion and vehicular emissions. An increase in traffic density and pollutant emissions tend to have an adverse impact on the environment as well as the economy and progress of the nation. Along with this, the impact of vehicular emission and pollution on human and animal health is disastrous.

Our solution, Atmospheric Air Analyzer (AtmAA); can be used to determine pollution levels so that necessary steps can be taken to prevent an increase in pollution levels and minimize it as much as possible. AtmAA is a device that detects the presence of various hazardous gases present in the atmosphere. It analyses the air around it, identifies different gasses present and gives data in the form of an integrated air quality index. The pollutants detected by AtmAA include NOx, CO, NH3, VOC’s, PM10, PM 2.5, CH4 and H2S. The hardware device constitutes various gas sensors that are integrated with a temperature and humidity sensor using a microcontroller. The gas sensors detect gasses and the temperature-humidity sensor determines the humidity levels along with the ambient temperature. All this data is integrated using the microcontroller and a final air quality index is received by the user on the mobile application. The Hardware devices mounted on roadsides collect the pollution related data. A device is mounted on lamp posts at 3-4m from the ground level. These devices are positioned according to the layout of the roads and are preferably placed on junctions a few meters away from the point of intersection. The location of the device is decided such that the data received is accurate and pertains to the pollution levels along the entire route. The android application is the access interface for AtmAA. The user receives required data through this application. It primarily updates the user about the real time pollution data of an area and suggests a best possible route to the user to prevent the formation of pollution hotspots. The application is based on Google maps, where an appropriate route to a destination, based on air quality is suggested from the user's location. The user can also get pollution related data of a desired location using the application.

METHOD

The project was based on the idea that a swarm of Air Quality devices would be deployed to retrieve localized information on air quality. Hence, it was necessary that hardware design had to be designed to operate reliably at low power and the mechanical casing should protect the device from environmental effects such as humidity, temperature and other such as factors. Further, for the system to decide and suggest the optimum travel route to the user, the model had to take the meteorological data, traffic data and geographic parameters, apart from sensor readings. Keeping these challenges in mind we came up with our first basic prototype and began testing. The hardware prototype was built using Arduino - owing to its easy of use, and electrochemical sensors were used to record AQI data. A simple regression model was also developed to accommodate for the non-linear characteristics of the sensor and to compensate for the change in sensor readings due to Humidity and Temperature. A mobile application was developed by my team, with Firebase as it's database. The sensor nodes were connected to the main network through Internet and the app could be used by users to know the local AQI around them.

While the first prototype was being developed, my team and I worked with Mr. Sachin Thakur (Tata Motors) to develop a business model and mapped out a customized service to be provided to our stakeholders. Plans were laid out to upscale the innovation from three major fronts: Electronics, Network & Security and Mobile Application. The electronic hardware was supposed to move towards a complete System-on-Chip design augmented by superior quality sensors and signal conditioning circuitry. The Network & Security domain was majorly behind and had to be worked upon for successful and reliable implementation. New features were supposed to be added the Mobile Application - such as route planner, pollution exposure calculator and alert. However, this phase couldn't kick off due to lack of funds and workforce.