A Portable Gas Sensor System for Air Quality Monitoring

Abstract

In ENEA, at Brindisi Research Center, a portable gas sensor system called NASUS IV based on solid-state gas sensors was built. This system is the last result of our technology researches in the area of tiny and portable sensor systems for air quality control. The main goal of the system designed and built in our laboratory is the development of a handheld device for detecting some pollutant gases such as CO, SO₂, NO₂, and H₂S. In order to test this machine in our laboratory under conditions similar to real situations, we employed a wide-volume gas chamber provided by an input and an output pipe. We put NASUS IV in the previously mentioned chamber, and we performed several tests with different kind of targeted gases. Future works concern about the employment of the NASUS IV in real environment by performing an experimental campaign in collaboration with the public regional environmental protection agency (ARPA-Puglia), which will provide in-field fixed stations in order to compare the performance of our machine with the conventional gas analyzers.