PORTEFEUILLE

Particulate matter (PM) pollution results in 4.2 million premature deaths annually, with 400,000 in Europe alone. Identifying the chemical makeup and sources of the PM pollution (or aerosol pollution) is challenging and costly. Aerospec's mission is to measure the chemical composition of the PM pollution - providing detailed analysis on its source, its makeup, and potential health effects. We aim to provide comprehensive and actionable data that empowers Governments and businesses to improve air quality and global health. We have made autonomous infrared spectroscopy of aerosol pollution possible, using a novel collector design. Infrared spectroscopy of aerosol pollution provides rich information that can be used to analyze the chemical makeup, and sources of the emissions. The integrated instrument, the Aerosol InfraRed (AIR) Monitor has two main parts – a hardware and a software. It collects the aerosol, measures the infrared spectra and cleans itself - allowing a scalable solution that can be deployed at multiple locations all across the globe. The software can currently analyze the chemical composition and has a GUI to operate and analyze the data. It does all of this while being cost-effective and does not require any additional instrument. We have an 8x price advantage over the presently available device combinations which are limited and costly, and can only measure some specific part of the PM pollution.

With the Aerosol Infrared (AIR) monitor product in final stages of development from Aerospec, the GRS InnoBooster grant will accelerate doing the final tests for relevant measurements of PM, and completing the development of some parts of the backend software to analyse some more parts of the PM and its sources. We will also partner with EPFL and PSI to run chamber studies to get our unique source signature dataset ready that will be a cornerstone in doing the source analysis automatically – one of our main goals.