A research team led by Associate Professor Teppei J. Yasunari at our center, consisting of Hokkaido University and Nagoya University members, has developed an automatic temperature-controlled insulated box for a small PM2.5 sensor (called PM2.5 measurement system). The system can automatically maintain the sensor’s operating temperature inside the insulation box even in cold temperature conditions. Indoor experiments for the system and outdoor observations during the winter in Sapporo and the summer in Alaska in 2019 have confirmed that the PM2.5 measurement system is practical enough to function in frigid environments and high concentration PM2.5 environments as wildfires.
In the future, stable and continuous observation of PM2.5 will be possible even in the Arctic region, such as Alaska, Greenland, etc., and Antarctica. In addition, we expect to expand PM2.5 observations to frigid regions where PM2.5 measurements are not enough.
See more information on the joint press release by Hokkaido University and Nagoya University (only available in Japanese):
https://www.hokudai.ac.jp/news/2022/03/pm25pm25.html
Yasunari, T. J., S. Wakabayashi, Y. Matsumi, and S. Matoba (2022), Developing an insulation box with automatic temperature control for PM2.5 measurements in cold regions, Journal of Environmental Management, 311, 114784. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114784
