The concerns related to particulate matter's health effects alongside the increasing demands from citizens for more participatory, timely, and diffused air quality monitoring actions have resulted in ...increasing scientific and industrial interest in low-cost particulate matter sensors (LCPMS). In the present paper, we discuss 50 LCPMS models, a number that is particularly meaningful when compared to the much smaller number of models described in other recent reviews on the same topic. After illustrating the basic definitions related to particulate matter (PM) and its measurements according to international regulations, the device's operating principle is presented, focusing on a discussion of the several characterization methodologies proposed by various research groups, both in the lab and in the field, along with their possible limitations. We present an extensive review of the LCPMS currently available on the market, their electronic characteristics, and their applications in published literature and from specific tests. Most of the reviewed LCPMS can accurately monitor PM changes in the environment and exhibit good performances with accuracy that, in some conditions, can reach
values up to 0.99. However, such results strongly depend on whether the device is calibrated or not (using a reference method) in the operative environment; if not,
values lower than 0.5 are observed.
Scalable and effective calibration is a fundamental requirement for low-cost air quality (AQ) monitoring systems and will enable accurate and pervasive monitoring in cities. Suffering from ...environmental interferences and fabrication variance, these devices need to encompass sensor-specific and complex calibration processes for reaching a sufficient accuracy to be deployed as indicative measurement devices in AQ monitoring networks. Concept and sensor drift often force the calibration process to be frequently repeated. These issues lead to unbearable calibration costs, which denies their massive deployment when accuracy is a concern. In this work, we propose a zero transfer samples, global calibration methodology as a technological enabler for Internet of Things (IoT) AQ multisensory devices, which relies on low-cost particulate matter (PM) sensors. This methodology is based on field recorded responses from a limited number of IoT AQ multisensors units and machine learning (ML) concepts and can be universally applied to all units of the same type. A multiseason test campaign has shown that, when applied to different sensors, this methodology's performances match those of state-of-the-art methodology, which requires to derive different calibration parameters for each different unit. If confirmed, these results show that, when properly derived, a global calibration law can be exploited for a large number of networked devices with dramatic cost reduction eventually allowing massive deployment of accurate IoT AQ monitoring devices. Furthermore, this calibration model could be easily embedded onboard of the device or implemented on the edge allowing immediate access to accurate readings for personal exposure monitor applications as well as reducing long-range data transfer needs.
Although sensor technologies have been developing quite similarly all over the world, the investigation of their applications has been more affected by the specific industrial and economic ...characteristics of each country. This paper aims to investigate the development of applications based on sensor devices in the sectors of energy and the environment, in Italy, throughout the last forty years (1976-2015), examining the most relevant papers published by Italian R & D groups working in this field. Italy depends on foreign imports for more than 80% of its primary energy needs, and this has directed the research effort on the development of sensor applications both to improve load shaping and consumers' awareness and to develop specific equipment to maximize renewable energy production. Similarly, for the environment sector, there are increasing efforts to develop solutions to support a more and more capillary control of the environment itself using a cooperative approach. In both the sectors it seems that the solutions proposed can help to relieve the structural problems that Italy suffers and that the scientific and technical results obtained so far also have significant international relevance.
The contributions of Italian researchers to sensor research in 2015 is reviewed. The analysis of the activities in one year allows one to obtain a snapshot of the Italian scenario capturing the main ...directions of the research activities. Furthermore, the distance of more than one year makes meaningful the bibliometric analysis of the reviewed papers. The review shows a research community distributed among different scientific disciplines, from chemistry, physics, engineering, and material science, with a strong interest in collaborative works.
Utility-scale photovoltaic plants can take up areas as wide as several tens of hectares, often occupying spaces normally used for other purposes. This “land competition” issue might become ...particularly relevant for agriculture since, similarly to the production of photovoltaic electricity, farming uses the sun as a primary energy source. Thus, there is increasing interest in investigating agrivoltaic plants that allow the coexistence of agricultural activity and the production of electricity from photovoltaics. Such solutions are more complex and expensive than standard ground-mounted photovoltaic plants, so it is questionable whether the economic revenues produced by the agrivoltaic choice and resulting from both the cropland activity and electricity production can compensate for the high costs involved. The problem is further complicated by the fact that both crop revenues and photoelectricity costs depend, in general, on the geographical location. In this study, a cost/benefit methodology was developed to investigate the conditions under which the installation of an agrivoltaic utility plant can be economically advantageous compared with a standard ground-mounted photovoltaic plant. The analysis relies on the evaluation of both the extra cost related to the agrivoltaic choice and the performance benefit related to the crop revenues. By fixing the capacity of PV utility plants to be installed in all Italian regions, results were validated, considering crops such as wheat, corn, soybean, potato, and sunflower that make use of wide areas. It was determined that the higher infrastructural costs of agrivoltaic plants seriously hamper their installation, even for high-revenue croplands, unless suitable supporting policies in the form of public subsidies are conceived. In this context, it would be useful to evaluate whether such financial aids conceived to support agrivoltaic implementation in productive agricultural areas could be better used to support agrivoltaic installations in croplands at risk of abandonment or even already abandoned croplands, recovering otherwise unproductive agricultural lands.
There is a consensus within the scientific community regarding the effects on the environment, health, and climate of the use of renewable energy sources, which is characterized by a rate of harmful ...polluting emissions that is significantly lower than that typical of fossil fuels. On the other hand, this transition towards the use of more sustainable energy sources will also be characterized by an increasingly widespread electrification rate. In this work, we want to discuss whether electricity distribution and transmission networks and their main components are characterized by emissions that are potentially harmful to the environment and human health during their operational life. We will see that the scientific literature on this issue is rather limited, at least until now. However, conditions are reported in which the network directly causes or at least promotes the emissions of polluting substances into the environment. For the most part, the emissions recorded, rather than their environmental or human health impacts, are studied as part of the implementation of techniques for the early determination of faults in the network. It is probable that with the increasing electrification of energy consumption, the problem reported here will become increasingly relevant.
Solar irradiance data provided by the Copernicus program are crucial for several scientific, environmental, and energy management applications, but their validation by means of ground-based ...measurements may be necessary, especially if daily and hourly data resolutions are required. The validation process not only ensures that reliable information is available for solar energy resource planning, power plant performance assessment, and grid integration, but also contributes to the improvement of the Copernicus system itself. Ground-based stations offer site-specific data, allowing for comprehensive assessments of the system’s performance. This work presents a comparative statistical analysis of solar irradiance data provided by the Copernicus system and ground-based measurements on a seasonal basis at three specific Italian reference sites, showing a maximum average relative error of less than 7% for hourly horizontal global irradiance in the irradiance range defined by the IEC 61724-2.
The full exploitation of Composite Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) in so-called
design is still limited by the lack of adequate quality assurance procedures for checking the adhesive bonding ...assembly, especially in load-critical primary structures. In this respect, contamination of the CFRP panel surface is of significant concern since it may severely affect the bonding and the mechanical properties of the joint. During the last years, the authors have developed and tested an electronic nose as a non-destructive tool for pre-bonding surface inspection for contaminants detection, identification and quantification. Several sensors and sampling architectures have been screened in view of the high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scenarios requirements. Ad-hoc pattern recognition systems have also been devised to ensure a fast and reliable assessment of the contamination status, by combining real time classifiers and the implementation of a suitable rejection option. Results show that e-noses could be used as first line low cost Non Destructive Test (NDT) tool in aerospace CFRP assembly and maintenance scenarios.
Introduction
Nanomaterials have widespread applications in several industrial sectors. ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) are among the most commonly used metal oxide NPs in personal care products, coating and ...paints. However, their potential toxicological impact on the environment is largely unexplored.
Materials and methods
The aim of this work was to evaluate whether ZnO nanoparticles exert toxic and genotoxic effects upon terrestrial organisms: plants (
Lepidium sativum
,
Vicia faba)
, crustaceans (
Heterocyipris incongruens
), insects (
Folsomia candida
). To achieve this purpose, organisms pertaining to different trophic levels of the soil ecosystem have been exposed to ZnO NPs. In parallel, the selected soil organisms have been exposed to the same amount of Zn in its ionic form (Zn
2+
) and the effects have been compared.
Results
The most conspicuous effect, among the test battery organisms, was obtained with the ostracod
H. incongruens
, which was observed to be the most sensitive organism to ZnO NPs. The root elongation of
L. sativum
was also mainly affected by exposure to ZnO NPs with respect to ZnCl
2
, while collembolan reproduction test produced similar results for both Zn compounds. Slight genotoxic effects with
V. faba
micronucleus test were observed with both soils.
Conclusion
Nanostructured ZnO seems to exert a higher toxic effect in insoluble form towards different terrestrial organisms with respect to similar amounts of zinc in ionic form.
Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring Systems (LCAQMS) and Machine Learning techniques are enabling a new paradigm in Air Quality Monitoring Networks. Nevertheless, compliance with Data Quality Objective ...(DQO) is still an open point. The assessment of various calibration models proposed in literature has ever neglected the Concept Drift, i.e. the differences in data distributions associated with input and target variables of the streaming data coming from dynamic nonstationary environments. The influence of the concept drift is investigated on the maintenance of the (calibrated) low-cost instrumentation. The data from mid-term co-location campaigns are firstly used to train a Multiple Linear Regression as calibration model. Then, an original methodology based on the Two-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test is proposed for automatically detecting the presence of the concept drift. The time evolution of the Relative Expanded Uncertainty is considered as well, to highlight the negative influence of the concept shift on the metrological performance of the LCAQMS, proving the need for the estimation of a new calibration model during the maintenance of the instrumentation in order to match the DQOs. A quantitative analysis is carried out on the distances among the training and test distributions about the input and outputs of the calibration model by correlating them with the time evolution of uncertainty. The scheme of an add-on block based on the proposed approach is designed for the continuous monitoring of the metrological performance exhibited by the calibration model. This management of the concept drift is expected to allow the long-awaited achievement of DQOs.
PDF
