Comparison of Air Exchange Ratio Calculations in Rural Indian Households using Low Cost Sensors
Abstract
Rural households in India experience some of the poorest indoor air qualities throughout the year. Reliance on solid biomass fuel in daily activities (e.g., cooking, space heating), are major contributors to these high pollutant levels. Although indoor air quality depends on the kind of fuel used, oven type, clean technology adoption and access to cleaner fuels, ventilation is an important and often overlooked aspect of household exposure. Air exchange ratio (AER), defined as the number of air changes per hour, is one means of assessing household ventilation. Numerous methods have been established to calculate AER, such as decay regression of typically inert pollutants (i.e., CO), CFD simulation, and tracer gas release. In this study, we compare three AER calculation methods for 14 rural households in India. This included identifying indoor emission events and decay phases and performing decay regression analysis on pollutants. These calculations were based on a 6-week campaign in 2020 measuring pollutant concentrations (CO, CO2, PM, NO, NO2, O3) in these 14 households with low-cost air quality sensors (SENSIT RAMP). We also compare our calculated AER values, across the three methods, to typical AERs from the literature used in in indoor air quality and exposure assessment. Using low-cost sensor data to estimate AER will support future research on individual household-based exposure modeling.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMA220.0004C
- Keywords:
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- 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0394 Instruments and techniques;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE