Continuous measurement of ambient air quality made simple with MCERTS certified particulate monitor

The DM30 Dustsens is the latest product from Sonitus Systems. The company builds high quality, reliable environmental monitoring products, backed up with expert, trustworthy service. Sonitus Systems has steadily grown to be a leading global supplier of construction and industrial monitoring instrumentation.

The Dustsens enables users to continuously monitor airborne particulates in a range of applications. The system is designed for applications where reliability, accuracy and simplicity are key, and is intended to provide long term measurements of dust levels, with minimal service requirements. Both PM10 and PM2.5 measurement functions are covered by the recent MCERTS approval.

The automated operation allows users to set up measurement points quickly and ensures long term reliability of data capture. This means that environmental professionals can spend more time managing their projects and less time servicing instrumentation in the field. This ease-of-use, combined with the rugged design means the Dustsens can be quickly deployed in a number of challenging environments with minimum effort.

“We have over 15 years of experience deploying instrumentation in tough environments all over the world. This product was designed in collaboration with our customers to ensure that we combined that expertise with customer requirements, giving a system that usersccan rely on for long term data collection. For example the heated inlet for all-weathercperformance is balanced with user-controlled power scheduling to allow extended use on batteries,” explains Ivor Humphreys, Technical Director at Sonitus Systems.

Complete boundary monitoring
The Dustsens is built on the mature and proven technology behind Sonitus Systems’ noise monitoring system, the EM2030 Sound Level Monitor. The DM30 Dustsens can easily be upgraded to the DM30N Sitesens, combining noise and dust monitoring into a single station.

Measuring points for these two parameters are often collocated, at the boundary of a site or facility. By combining two key measurements into a single station users can make significant cost savings on instrumentation as well as additional savings on setup time, power and ongoing service costs. Increased reliability and improved efficiency in one rugged station.

Calibration and service for your particulate monitor
The team at Sonitus Systems have adopted an innovative approach to calibration and service of the Dustsens product which is intended to minimise downtime for customers in the field. Having successfully operated a network of several thousand devices around the world for the last decade, they were keen to ensure that long term operation and servicing will be as simple as possible for international customers. This customer-oriented approach led to a more modular design, enabling quick swap out of calibrated sensor modules.

The company used the downtime afforded by the pandemic to accelerate development of sophisticated particulate testing laboratories at their headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. The investment in state-of-the-art dust chamber and test facilities means that every device can be thoroughly tested against a Near-Reference standard monitoring station, as well as undergoing extensive quality checks.

Measurement modules are calibrated independently from the rugged monitoring station so that pre-calibrated sensors can be shipped to customers when service falls due every two years. The measurement module can be swapped out easily within 15 minutes, resulting in minimum downtime for stations in the field.

According to Bartley McElroy, Commercial Director at Sonitus Systems,“We wanted to address the  total cost of ownership for our users by reducing the number of site visits and the amount of time  needed to calibrate a device. By swapping out a small module we obviously reduce the time, but we  also reduce the cost associated with a service run on site visits, travel, shipping and manpower. In  addition to costs, the carbon footprint of the service is minimised too, which is an important  consideration for our own team and our customers,”.

Air quality Intelligence for better decisions 
The Dustsens is connected to the Sonitus Cloud online reporting platform, allowing users to easily access and analyse their measurement data from any device. The Sonitus Cloud automates the analysis of large amounts of measurement data, turning readings into the be information people need to make informed decisions. Limit breach checks, SMS and email alerts and equipment performance tests are all fully automated by the cloud software.

David McDonald, the company’s Senior Software Developer explains how the system works:

“The Sonitus Cloud is intended to automate some of the more time-consuming work that our customers need to do with large amounts of measurement data. We analyse the data for trends and check against any project limits so that we can let users know where to focus their attention. That means that expert users spend their time delivering high value expertise to their clients and running their projects more smoothly.

There are some really nice features that have been added in at the request of our customers in the air quality industry. Our latest addition is an artificial intelligence tool to recognise undesirable weather conditions. The Dustsens measures a range of environmental parameters and sends them back to the Sonitus Cloud, then our artificial intelligence tools look for patterns of poor weather conditions that would affect the quality of measurement data.

We can identify these periods and make allowance for that in our analysis. Every single measurement from every device is checked to ensure accurate performance of the measurement systems.”