Preparation and Characterization of Affordable Experimental Sensors Array for Particulate Matter Sensing

Interest for particulate matter (PM) sensors has increased significantly during last decade. Having a proper experimental setup to test these sensors is necessary. Most of the devices that are used in the PM test setups for both PM generating and measuring are bulky and expensive. In this study a cost-effective experimental setup has been designed with a custom made PM generator and small size laser and quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors. The generator has the capability of producing PM from three different sources: dry powder, liquid suspension and combustion. The QCM completes the weakness of small laser sensors for sensing the ultra-fine particles. Moreover, performance of the QCM sensor has been investigated with different PM sources and different ambient conditions. It has been found that the response of QCM could be affected from PM source and ambient condition. The change in PM composition and size causes notable impact on QCM response. Relative humidity (RH) also could change the sensor response up to 22%. While changing the temperature of the flow has not significant effect on QCM response, increasing the temperature from 25°C to 30°C caused 12% change in QCM response in grease-coated one. The QCM sensor has the best response with small size smoke PM’s with lowest effect from ambient conditions.