This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Un sensor óptico medirá la contaminación atmosférica urbana producida por los vehículos

An optical sensor will measure the urban atmospheric pollution produced by the vehicles

19/04/2012

19 April 2012

The quality of the air affects directly to the health of any population. What minor was the atmospheric pollution of a city, better will be the respiratory and cardiovascular health of his inhabitants.

To control the quality of the air that breathes in the public spaces is necessary to have an able system to detect and analyse of simultaneous way the distinct gases that there is in the environingingment. In this sense, the Centre Fedit AIDO –together with Ceit, Give Photonics, Ral, SnellOptics and the Polytechnical University of Valencia– works in the design and manufacture of a sensor of low cost that will detect the level of pollution of the air, especially the one of the gases generated by the combustion of the vehicles.

Of the distinct gases contaminantes produced by the traffic, three are of particular importance: the monoxide of carbon (CO), the dioxide of nitrogen (NO₂) and the sulphur dioxide (UNDER₂). Precisely, the sensor will detect of simultaneous way the presence of these three types of gases to determine the level of toxicity of the air analysed.

This initiative is especially conceived to measurement and control the quality of the air in places like tunnels, subterranean garages and public roads. For example, in determinate subterranean parkings breathes a high concentration of the compounds issued by the tubes of leakage of the vehicles, being necessary to schedule strategies of renewal of air to protect so much to the customers as to the employees. Besides, the energetic cost of the ventilation of the big tunnels is very high and could racionalizarse if they establish strategies of suitable ventilation to the needs of each moment, in function of the influx of vehicles.

The device –whose first prototype will be available around the middle of 2013– also will allow to measure the concentration of gases in big urban roads, an indispensable information if it wants to elaborate a map of the atmospheric pollution of each city and obtain data on the evolution. Recently, the World Health Organisation ensured that the urban atmospheric pollution cause in everything in world 1,3 million deaths to the year.

The project, designated ‘Photonic Device Multicanal for the Analysis of Atmospheric Pollution Produced by the Resultant Products of the Combustion' (Focom), has the support of the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Mineco), inside the subprograma Innpacto and of the European Bottom of Regional Development (Feder).