AQMesh used in project to measure the influence of cruise ship emissions on local air quality

AQMesh has been used in a project at the Port of Kiel, Germany, to measure emissions of nitrous oxides (NOx) and fine particulate matter (PM) around its cruise ship terminal.

This year the port attracted 166 visits by 33 different cruise ships, bringing a record breaking 600,000 visitors into the city. Emissions from the cruise ship terminal and its impact on the local air quality has been in discussion for some time, as the city’s references stations indicate that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels regularly exceed the World Health Organisation’s annual mean limit of 40μg/m³.

The joint project with Eurofins and Olfasense, who combined AQMesh air quality monitors with the Ortelium dynamic atlas system, measured and studied levels of NO2 and PM at the cruise ship terminal over several months.

AQMesh pods, supplied by its German distributor Envilyse, measured NO, NO2, O3 alongside PM1, PM2.5 and PM10, as well as relative humidity, temperature and atmospheric pressure. After being co-located with passive samplers at the installation site to provide the greatest degree of accuracy, real time sensor data from the AQMesh pods was fed into Ortelium.

The Ortelium atlas allowed measurements from the AQMesh pod to be visualised in real time and, combined with meteorological data feeds, showed how the emission levels changed during arrival, berthing and departure of the cruise ships.

Data analysis from this study concluded the cruise ships could not be attributed to high levels of NO2. This is similar outcome to a study carried out at a UK airport, which concluded that local traffic was in fact more of an issue than the airport activity.

Plumes from shipping are notoriously difficult to detect and analyse from land, but AQMesh now has a carbon dioxide (CO2) sensor which allows a combustion plume to be detected from elevated CO2 levels. Pollutants can then be evaluated in this context.

AQMesh is in use at a variety of harbours and ports around the world including the UK, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, Germany and Vietnam. The pods can now monitor up to 6 gases using the latest generation of sensors, as well as PM1, PM2.5, PM10 and total particle count (TPC) with a light-scattering optical particle counter.

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