Many people use the Dusttrak from TSI for about 5K for portable (battery-operated), "OK" accuracy PM measurements. Its more designed to measure extreme events or high levels than to be super-accurate in a clean environment.

Hello Graydon

You can go for GRIMM Spectrometer 1.109, it is battery operated and provides a decent battery back up of 8 hours and above all provides with the data on the 16 channels.

It would be lesser in cost to TSI Dusttrack.

extra info for repliers:

official price of his apparatus

$199.99

DC1100 AIR QUALITY MONITOR

see their website

Just make sure you get the range, accuracy, etc you need and if you want to publish the data - verify the device has been used in publications of the caliber you hope for. If you don't care about quality, then there is an iPhone app that converts the flashlight into a PM monitor. A cheap sensor can be more useful if you have a way to calibrate it with sufficient frequency.

mr Yokelson

the mentioned instrument is used by sufferers of asthma at home

See US EPA's Air Sensor Guidebook

http://www.epa.gov/airscience/docs/air-sensor-guidebook.pdf

Hi Graydon,

TSI makes a whole range of DustTrak aerosol monitors, ranging from handheld instruments to desktop solutions with an external pump for continuous, unattended measurement. Some of these measure only the PM2.5 fraction while others can monitor PM1, PM2.5, Respirable, PM10 and Total PM size fractions simultaneously. Lowest in cost is the SidePak Personal Aerosol Monitor, a rugged, lightweight aerosol photometer. These would be my choices - but then I have enjoyed a TSI salary for 20+ years.

No matter what PM2.5 monitor you consider, the real question is if you have any expectations beyond portable and inexpensive. For instance, how accurate should the instruments be? Or are relative trends good enough? And do you need to adjust the calibration to certain aerosol types or is the factory cal good enough? How about the measurement duration, is it a campaign that takes a few hours at one measurement location or more of a continuous monitoring application? And how do you want to access the data? You can probably find out most of the answers on the manufacturers' websites but I would recomment that you try to talk to a technical support person as well. Good Luck!

Oliver

@Robert

The sensor-link of EPA has the mentioned Dylos instrument in its listing for Household use and it is by far the cheapest

I have also experinece with Lighthouse and MetOne instruments. Whatever photometer (nephelometrs, OPCs, etc) you decide to use, it is very important to remember that they are calibrated using a standard PM (i.e. the ISO Arizona road dust), but the PM density and size distribution in other environemnts can greatly differ from those of the ISO test dust. So, if you need accurate results, you should apply a correction factor determined on the basis of parallel gravimetric determinations.

See for example

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259959625_Airborne_particulate_matter_in_school_classrooms_of_northern_Italy

Article Airborne Particulate Matter in School Classrooms of Northern Italy

Andrea

He asks for an INEXPENSIVE instrument

Harry, you are right. To hold the costs down, reliable gravimetric information can be also obtained using an internal filter holder (i.e. TSI DustTrak II, GRIMM, etc), which is not so expensive but very useful. In my opinion it is important to keep in mind that these optical instruments can give continuous (not always accurate) results. There is no need for many gravimetric measurements: once a mean calibration factor is determined for a specific environment and a specific PM fraction, the instrument can be used with greatly improved accuracy.

By far the cheapest are smoke alarms sold at your local hardware store for few tens of euros or dollars, if you modify them. I recommend getting both ionization and optical types, and reading papers (and a U.S. patent) by David Litton.

Michal

Your idea has already been applied in real life, see:

ftp://ftp.ecn.nl/pub/www/library/report/2014/l14066.pdf

Harry,

thank you for sending the link, it is nice to see simple technology at work. It was not my idea, smoke alarms were suggested by a group in California some time ago... we use an ionization smoke alarm sampling vehicle exhaust to measure particulate matter emissions on DPF-equipped vehicles.

Michal

Can you please provide the name of the group in California

Harry,

I know about this from Dave Litton at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Pittsburgh, here are links to the papers:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/027868290883333

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10473289.2006.10464491

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/amtic/files/ambient/pm25/r-98-012.pdf You can read these guidelines and after that make a choice with best PM2.5 monitor not cheapest.

I bought it from here. It is good enough to test whether my air purifier still working properly.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-Portable-digital-lcd-Air-PM2-5-0-3um-2-5um-Unit-Tester-Meter-Air-dust/32289285735.html

Video

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XODc5Nzk2OTEy.html

Real-time display environment temperature, precision plus or minus 2 ℃

L real-time display environment humidity value, plus or minus 3% accuracy

Above reading is polluted air and below is filtered air

Wan Jiao et al., "Field Assessment of the Village Green Project: An Autonomous Community Air Quality Monitoring System", Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 49, Pages 6085-6092, 2015.

 @Vincent Sutedy, may I know whether this monitor can run 24/7 non-stop for prolonged period? I need a monitor for a project which can run up to a month...

You might want to look here as a start: http://www.metone.com/docs/neighborhood_monitor_service_20150601.pdf

There are other systems available from different manufacturers.

No one used the Sharp Dust sensor Gp2y1010? Opinions about that?

It is not a ready-to-use monitor (see image...) and some evaluation studies already exist in literature.

http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/7569/1/SHA-SHA_SHELYNA_MOHD_SHARIFF.pdf

http://bentham-open.com/contents/pdf/TOENVIEJ/TOENVIEJ-7-10.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthias_Berning/publication/266483250_Demo_Handheld_Particulate_Matter_Measurements_with_COTS_Sensors/links/554531f90cf24107d397b096.pdf

Article Demo: Handheld Particulate Matter Measurements with COTS Sensors

Dear All,

I need to collect air particulate and determine source apportionment of the samples. Can I use Dylos DC1700 as the sampler. I need one for my project

Here's a publication that may be helpful to you:

Milena Jovasevic-Stojanovi et al., "On the use of small and cheaper sensors and devices for indicative citizen-based monitoring of respirable particulate matter", Environmental Pollution 206 (2015) 696-704.

Respirable particulate matter present in outdoor and indoor environments is a health hazard. The particle concentrations can quickly change, with steep gradients on short temporal and spatial scales, and their chemical composition and physical properties vary considerably. Existing networks of aerosol particle measurements consist of limited number of monitoring stations, and mostly aim at assessment of compliance with air quality legislation regulating mass of particles of varying sizes. These networks can now be supplemented using small portable devices with low-cost sensors for assessment of particle mass that may provide higher temporal and spatial resolution if we understand the capabilities and characteristics of the data they provide. This paper overviews typical currently available devices and their characteristics. In addition it is presented original results of measurement and modelling in the aim of one low-cost PM monitor validation.

Here's another publication:

Wan Jiao et al., "Community Air Sensor Network (CAIRSENSE) project: Evaluation of low-cost sensor performance in a suburban environment in the southeastern United States", Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., doi:10.5194/amt-2016-131, 2016.

Advances in air pollution sensor technology have enabled the development of small and low cost systems to measure outdoor air pollution. The deployment of a large number of sensors across a small geographic area would have potential benefits to supplement traditional monitoring networks with additional geographic and temporal measurement resolution, if the data quality were sufficient. To understand the capability of emerging air sensor technology, the Community Air Sensor Network (CAIRSENSE) project deployed low cost, continuous and commercially-available air pollution sensors at a regulatory air monitoring site and as a local sensor network over a surrounding ~2 km area in Southeastern U.S. Co-location of sensors measuring oxides of nitrogen, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and particles revealed highly variable performance, both in terms of comparison to a reference monitor as well as whether multiple identical sensors reproduced the same signal. Multiple ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide sensors revealed low to very high correlation with a reference monitor, with Pearson sample correlation coefficient (r) ranging from 0.39 to 0.97, -0.25 to 0.76, -0.40 to 0.82, respectively. The only sulfur dioxide sensor tested revealed no correlation (r < 0.5) with a reference monitor and erroneously high concentration values. A wide variety of particulate matter (PM) sensors were tested with variable results – some sensors had very high agreement (e.g., r = 0.99) between identical sensors, however moderate agreement with a reference PM2.5 monitor (e.g., r = 0.65). For select sensors that had moderate to strong correlation with reference monitors (r > 0.5), step-wise multiple 1 linear regression was performed to determine if ambient temperature, relative humidity (RH), or age of the sensor in sampling days could be used in a correction algorithm to improve the agreement. Maximum improvement in agreement with a reference, incorporating all factors, was observed for an NO2sensor (multiple correlation coefficient R2adj-orig = 0.57, R2 adj-final = 0.81); however, other sensors showed no apparent improvement in agreement. A four-node sensor network was successfully able to capture ozone (2 nodes) and PM (4 nodes) data for an 8 month period of time and show expected diurnal concentration patterns, as well as potential ozone titration due to near-by traffic emissions. Overall, this study demonstrates a straightforward methodology for establishing low-cost air quality sensor performance in a real-world setting and demonstrates the feasibility of deploying a local sensor network to measure ambient air quality trends.

Hi,

Aeoroqual makes cheap and portable PM2.5 /

PM10 monitors. It's small size (mobile phone size) and battery operated (24 hours). The monitors can also be used to monitor other pollutants like O3 (the best quality sensor in the filed), NO2, ect using appropriate sensor heads.

https://www.aeroqual.com/product/portable-particulate-monitor

Thanks Mahmut

What about Plantower? PMS5003? or other models?

http://www.plantower.com/en/content/?108.html

Regards

I appreciate you. Somebody has suggested PMS1003 and PMS7003. Please which one is better?

Thanks