Abstract

Indoor and outdoor air quality is one of the key factors influencing human health. However, air quality evaluation is not easy task. Air is a complex system, which is subjected to changes even within short period of time. Progress in analytical methods and analytical tools provides increasingly more reliable information on the condition and quality of indoor and outdoor air. This progress, however, generates an increase in the cost of monitoring and air quality control, which substantially limits their widespread implementation. Hence, new, alternative methods of gaining the information about air quality are being sought. Sensor-based techniques are quite promising in this field. The term ‘chemical sensor’ refers to a device, which transforms chemical information originating from the surroundings into analytically useful signal. Some of numerous advantages of this approach include low production cost of the sensors, their simple design and possibility of miniaturization as well as relatively good metrological parameters. Combination of the sensors with the data analysis methods based on reference identification allow elaboration of modern measurement systems. For many years the chemical sensors for measurement of gaseous air pollutants have been available commercially. Recently sensor matrixes (named also electronic noses) gained increased popularity. This contribution is going to present basic categories of the chemical sensors together with their utility parameters (including electrochemical, optical, thermal, mass sensors), which are employed for air quality control. The sensors utilizing selective detection of particular compound (marker) in investigated gaseous sample as well as the sensor matrixes systems comprised of non-selective sensors utilizing acquired information for analysis and proper discrimination of chemical image of gaseous sample will also be presented. Moreover, the contribution is going to provide some information on commercial availability of the chemical sensors and sensor matrixes. Finally, practical aspects of the sensors and sensor matrixes application will be discussed with respect to air quality evaluation in different fields of human activity.

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