LESS CO2 = HIGHER CONCENTRATION!
At school, the healthiness of the spaces promotes the learning and well-being of the STUDENTS. High CO₂ concentrations cause drowsiness and low concentration. It is particularly important to promote a correct exchange of air and to be able to measure in a scientific and objective way the parameters that influence the environmental quality, allowing timely interventions to improve it.
QuAir constantly monitors indoor air quality and indoor environmental comfort, measuring the fundamental parameters for the healthiness of indoor environments: temperature, humidity, VOCs, CO2, PM1, PM2.5, PM10. The IoT sensor, designed to improve air quality at school and mitigate the risk of transmission of airborne viruses, promotes the healthiness of school environments.
Where possible, thanks to the connection to the systems, there are added benefits related to their improved efficiency and consequent energy savings.
The use of the QuAir sensor concretely implements the principles of environmental sustainability, applied to buildings.
QuAir is also used as a teaching tool, making each classroom an educationally advanced and interactive environment. Active and collaborative learning lets students consolidate cognitive and social skills, and good practices. The sensor has stimulated the birth of a series of mathematics, statistical, technical and technological projects, as well as more transversal sectors, such as civic education and environmental education.
The benefits of using QuAir at school:
- promotes learning and attention
- increases the level of well-being of students and teachers
- makes for active involvement of students and school staff
- reduces sick leave as it guides people to proper air exchange
- improves environmental healthiness with consequent lower spread of airborne viruses
- it constantly monitors and guarantees always available data to analyse the situation in individual rooms, guide occupants to a correct air exchange, or communicate with systems or individual actuators to efficiently automate their operation
- can be used as a teaching tool
Features:
- easy to use: intuitive and immediate
- no installation required
- modular: in the choice of parameters to be measured
- connected: via Wi-Fi, data are sent and stored in the cloud so that they can be consulted remotely
Etika project
The partners of “etika”, an initiative of Cooperazione Trentina, have decided to promote a technological and educational project to ensure air quality in some of the schools in the Province of Trento.
The project had the following main objectives:
- inform students and teachers on air quality issues
- monitor air quality in the classroom
- optimise heating costs: the sensor showed the best time to ventilate naturally
- create specific educational projects through the use of the QuAir sensor.
An important initiative that saw UpSens involved in both the design and application stages.
QuAir sensors were placed in the classrooms, laboratories and offices of three different high schools. These sensors made it possible to improve the healthiness of the spaces and therefore the well-being of students and teachers, during the hours spent in the classroom and, at the same time, to reduce heat loss due to the opening of windows for air exchange, guiding occupants to proper air exchange.
The installation of QuAir, an IoT sensor designed and produced by UpSens, in the schools involved in the project is still making it possible to constantly monitor four main parameters to assess air quality: temperature, relative humidity, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon dioxide (CO2). The latter is particularly relevant in places frequented by several people at the same time and for a long time, such as classrooms or laboratories in a school, because its concentration helps understand if an indoor environment is properly ventilated. The technology with which QuAir is equipped enables it, in addition to monitoring the mentioned parameters, to indicate the exact moment in which it is necessary to ventilate, to ensure a correct exchange of air. QuAir also alerts when there is sufficient air exchange and therefore when it is possible to close the windows, to avoid unnecessary heat loss in buildings, especially during the winter. In this way, the QuAir sensor makes a real contribution to energy savings.
no structural work is required on the buildings to use QuAir: it suffices to have the power outlet and the Wi-Fi network available to send the data detected by the sensor to the cloud space. Thanks to the platform to which the sensor is connected, it is always possible to consult the environmental quality status of individual spaces in real time or analyse the history of a given period. The data are displayed through simple intuitive graphs, both those pertaining to the single measured parameter and to the Index Air Quality (IAQ), a quality indicator that takes into account the measurements coming from the individual sensors and, thanks to an algorithm, draws up an index in levels.
The last stage of the project promoted by etika saw the use of QuAir by students and teachers as a teaching tool. It has been used for projects in scientific subjects, such as mathematics and statistics, for more technical and technological activities, but also for projects related to civic and environmental education.
The latter, a subject recently re-introduced at school, is very important when it comes to training and bringing the new generations closer to the issues of sustainability, in which UpSens firmly believes, for the transition to a culture based on attention to the environment and awareness of the importance of air quality for the healthiness of indoor spaces.
