Spain. The School of Telecommunications Engineering of the UPCT has a portable air quality analysis system that allows it to evaluate in real time the risk of contagion by aerosols of diseases such as COVID-19 or seasonal flu, by measuring suspended particles, CO2 levels and the estimation of the people who occupy the room in which the device that has been located is located. developed Qartech Innovations, a spin-off of the Polytechnic created by professors of 'Teleco'.
Unlike devices that only measure CO2 levels, the device that has been installed in the UPCT and in schools in Lorca allows to assess the amount of aerosols present in the room, alert the center when the risk levels established by the World Health Organization are exceeded and warn when the air quality in the room has returned to safe values.
"By measuring CO2 you can only know the activity that exists in the room, but not the aerosols, so, for example, the values are similar, whether or not masks are used," explains researcher Antonio Javier García, even warning of possible distortions in this indicator only due to the use of heaters.
"It is a very interesting device to improve the safety of our students, now with COVID-19, but also later with other airborne diseases such as influenza, to know when we have worrying levels of aerosols and it is necessary to ventilate the space," says the director of the School of Telecommunications Engineering, Alejandro Melcón.
The device measures PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 particles and counts people in the room by their mobile phone identifiers. The data is transmitted to Qartech's servers using IoT technology through a LoRa communications infrastructure that Qartech has. The School of Telecommunications Engineering, which has purchased the system at cost price, also has the possibility of displaying the continuous data of the meter on the screens of the center.
Qartech also develops air quality meters for outdoor spaces in industry, such as those it has installed around the port of Almeria and at the Lafarge-Holcim cement factory in Carboneras. "We offer turnkey solutions, which include both devices (measurement of gases, particles, etc.), as well as communication networks, analysis through artificial intelligence, preventive maintenance, anti-vandal protection and power systems using renewable energies, which make the position of the equipment independent", detail professors Joan García and Rafael Asorey.
In the Qartech laboratory, where graduates of the School of Telecommunications Engineering such as José Martínez work, it has unique equipment, such as one of the few potentiostats nationwide that allows calibrating up to eight sensors simultaneously. The teachers are also very proud to be able to generate a highly technological productive fabric in the Region.
Source: School of Telecommunications Engineering of the UPCT.
