Cleantech startup Aeromon monitors air pollution using drone
Aeromon, a Finnish cleantech startup, has completed a pilot program for detecting fugitive emissions via drone-mounted sensors.
The pilot program was carried out at the Ämmässuo waste treatment centre (operated by the Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY, Finland). Historical data captured using hand-held measurement tools were compared with aerial measurements taken by a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) fitted with Aeromon’s sensor package. The composition and concentration of the biowaste stack and treatment facility emissions were also studied.
The results showed closely corresponding data to the HSY reference results, which demonstrated the accuracy of the Aeromon platform.
“When aerially-deployed, our sensor package can create a detailed emissions map of an industrial area,” said Jouko Salo, Chairman of Aeromon. “This data can be combined with environmental data in our cloud-based analytics platform Aeromon Cloud Service to provide a complete view of the emissions.”
Drones are becoming increasingly popular for visual inspections, as their agility allows them to fly close to hard-to-reach areas. Seemingly, these qualities are equally helpful in emissions detection.
“The analysers used in Aeromon’s quadcopter were very portable and seemed reliable,” said Roni Järvensivu, Site Environmental Engineer as HSY Ämmässuo. “The graphs provided in Aeromon’s final report were informative and easy to understand. We found the results obtained by Aeromon’s quadcopter to be close to our measurements.”
The ultra-lightweight nature of Aeromon’s analyser platform means it can be deployed in fixed and hand-held configurations and can be carried by any drone/RPAS/UAS capable of carrying a professional camera set.
