Testing the characteristics of portable PM monitors in laboratory conditions

This paper presents the results of testing the characteristics of portable PM monitors in laboratory conditions. The test was conducted in the Laboratory for Applied Informatics and Computer Engineering of the Mining and Metallurgy Institute Bor during February 2025. The results of measuring the concentrations of suspended particles PM10 and PM2.5 obtained using the reference gravimetric measurement method were compared with the results of PM monitors, which use low-cost sensors based on the principle of light scattering to determine the concentrations of suspended particles. The results of measuring PM concentrations using portable monitors are lower than the results obtained using the gravimetric method by 20-30%, for both observed PM fractions. The correlation coefficients (Pearson's) between the PM monitor results are higher than 0.98, which indicates an exceptional agreement between the PM monitor measurement results. Also, comparisons were made between the results of measuring the temperature and relative humidity of the reference instrument and the results of the temperature and relative humidity sensors installed in the PM monitors. Deviations of temperature measurement results compared with the reference instrument are within the limits of ± 1°C, and in the case of relative air humidity, the deviations are within the boundaries of ± 5% RH compared with the reference instrument (average hourly values).