Real-time Dust Monitors

Ecotech designs and integrates a wide range of real time dust monitors including light scattering based PM monitors and beta attenuation monitors.

Ecotech dust monitors can be incorporated into air conditioned weatherproof shelters or can be stand alone powered by solar panels. Ecotech offer a wide range of solutions for many different types of industries including mining, construction, pulp & paper, cement manufacturing, aluminium smelting and compliance monitoring of all types.

Ecotech offers fully integrated solar powered real-time dust monitoring systems utilising either the beta attenuation or light scattering technique for accurate, reliable and low maintenance performance.

These systems incorporate solar panels, batteries, data acquisition, remote communication and data validation and reporting software that is used to remotely download data from the dust monitors using 3G communication. Meteorological parameters such as wind speed, direction, relative humidity and temperature can also be incorporated and mounted on an integrated mast.

Ecotech designs and supplies dust monitoring systems capable of determining the contribution of particulates from a local source such as a quarry or a site undergoing decontamination.

These systems utilise a variety of real-time dust monitors, wind speed and direction sensors and the Ecotech WinAQMS Data Acquisition System which calculates the difference between the upwind particulate concentration and the downwind particulate concentration performing calculations to determine the actual site contribution of particulates.

If site contribution rises above a settable threshold then alarms can be sent to site operators to activate dust suppression activities. Data can also be retrieved remotely using Ecotech's Wincollect 5 software.

Dust monitoring can be combined with:

Wind speed/direction
Automatic reporting
Visibility measurements
Gaseous pollutants (O₃, CO, CO₂, SO₂, NO_X etc)

Source apportionment monitoring involves instruments that allow users to measure dust mass measurements (mg/m³) every minute, along with giving indications of changes in dust composition and source.

By utilising the Aurora Nephelometer (measuring scattering coeficient of aerosols) and connecting it to a beta attenuation dust monitor (measuring PM concentrations) it is possible to create a correlation factor which can automatically adjust the PM output from the Aurora Nephelometer in order to provide 1 minute real time PM data.

This correction factor will remain constant and can automatically be updated every hour. If the particulate type/source changes due to a change in the particulate air mass, such as when urban air is replaced by marine air due to a wind change the correction factor will change. This change in the correction factor can be continuously monitored and provides information on changes in aerosol chemistry.

This solution provides the following data:

Hourly averaged PM concentration from a U.S. EPA approved compliance monitors
Scattering coefficient from the nephelometer
Corrected real time 1 minute PM concentrations.
Scatter/PM correction factor (updated hourly)
Ambient Visibility based on Koshmediers theorem

Dust Samplers

Monitoring particulates and dust

Real-time Dust Monitors

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