As you may know, in Semester 6, Engineering and Automotive students get to work multidisciplinary with fellow students for companies, for example to improve a product or work on innovations. One of the new opportunities is to collaborate on a sustainability project about measuring air quality.

Building air quality sensors
Example from the real world? Some residents from Nijmegen Lent have built air quality sensors (check out the Ohnics map) that they want to place throughout the village. A few engineering students started last year to further improve the Ohnics meters and to process the data. A new group of students is needed to be able to build on previous measurements and processed data!

What can your project contribution be as a student?
You could for example work on designing solar cells that are added to the air quality sensors (Ohnics), or design, an improved housing for the sensors, or design a bracket construction to hang the sensors on lampposts. Fun for a Mechanical Engineering student?

Or you can help to combine the processing of data from Ohnics with data on traffic, humidity and wind direction. Preferably build this in an App. Such processing is vital for the identification of pollution sources. This could probably be worked out in Electrical and Electronic Engineering or Embedded Systems Engineering as an assignment.

Improvement of the airflow around the particulate sensor is needed by designing a new cabinet. Which Industrial Product Design student would like to work on this? And how to connect this to a solar panel with reliable connections to a server at RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and Environment)?

Why the Ohnics measurements?
These Ohnics measurements, among other measurements, will contribute to a better insight in the relationship between wood stoves, humidity, wind direction and traffic volume. It will also subsequently measure whether modifications have an effect. By measuring over a longer period of time, properly calibrating the various devices and correctly processing information about traffic, wind, greenery and humidity, the Ohnics group members hope to gain a better insight in the sources of pollution.

Does this sound interesting and fun to you? Pass it on!
If you are in your 3rd year and you would like to work on a project that focuses on air quality? Let your teacher Ton Ammerlaan know via Ton.Ammerlaan@han.nl. He will gauge the interest and ensure that you are further informed!