DEVELOPMENT OF A DUST MEASUREMENT SYSTEM

Abstract

The development of dust density instrument with logging device consists of an optical dust sensing unit which is comprised of an infrared transmitter, a photodiode as detector, current source circuit and heating element; dc fan; current-to-voltage amplifier, analog-to-digital converter, microcontroller (arduino mega 2560), liquid crystal display and storage devices. The sensor has the ability to detect dust particle PM 2.5 and above. The sensitivity of the sensing unit is 0.17μg/m3/V. The minimum and maximum dust density that can be detected is 0μg/m3 and 541 μg/m3 respectively. The resolution of the instrument is 0.001 μg/m2. The correlation of 0.9998 was obtained when compared with Sharp dust density measuring instrument. The correlation is close to unity. The maximum power consumption of the dust density instrument is 1.25 watts (current consumption is 0.203A). The cost incurred in developing one instrument is about N58, 000 and far less than imported dust density which is about N120, 000.