Ultralow Power Sensors for Firefighter Safety and Monitoring of Surrounding Air Quality

Wildland fires produce a significant amount of air pollution often over very large areas.Wildfires produce significant air pollution including VOCs such as formaldehyde and other aldehydesCO O3 nitrogen oxides (NOx) SO2 and particulate matter (PM). These pollutants pose healthand safety risks to first responders as well as residents in nearby areas and downwind communities.Also wild fires are increasing in size and intensity and the fire season is growing longer.KWJ has developed a line of small low-cost yet accurate electrochemical gas sensors with verylow-power electronics. KWJ is also working with several collaborators to develop of an ultralowpower sensor for monitoring atmospheric "ultrafine" particulate. For particulate we propose todevelop a miniature extremely low-power electrostatic PM monitor by integrating our patented"diffuse plasma ionization sources" (DPIS) with electrostatic plates for fractionation andmeasurement of particulate.We plan to integrate the gas and particulate sensors into a single low-power and lightweightpackage which can be deployed in distributed networks of stationary as well as wearable/mobilesensor modules will provide greatly enhanced air quality and personal exposure monitoring. Asmobile pollutant/hazard monitoring platforms gain acceptance across the health and safety industryand with consumers the number of potential applications is also increasing. Applications for sucha small ultralow power broad spectrum package of gas and particle sensors include urbanpollution monitoring source and perimeter monitoring on and around refineries and chemicalfacilities and confined space monitoring in busy enclosed spaces such as subways and trainstations.