Particulate matter (PM) is an air pollution term for a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. The pollutant comes in a variety of sizes and can be composed of many types of materials and chemicals.  Particles that are small enough to be inhaled have the potential to cause health effects.  Of  particular concern is a class of particles known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5 that gets deep into the
lung.
LCT-14 is the QBit portable PM Measuring system directly derived from the experience of LCT-12 the Laser-scattering based PM Measuring Station for Environmental Monitoring. LCT-12 has proven its capabilities in outdoor H24 measures for over two years, without maintenance needs.

LCT-14 shares with LCT-12 the Laser Light scattering sensor produced by QBit, but it has the advantage of being battery operated and enclosed in a rugged watertight plastic case. Thus it can be easily carried and operated in many different field applications: among others indoor and outdoor working places to monitor dust and pollution conditions, both for the protection of workers health and for the success of various processes.
A further advantage of LCT-14 is that it has been designed to be operated using standard open-source resources. This makes it much easier to interface with the external world and take advantage of the “Internet of things”. Our portable meter communicates simple ASCII data through a standard USB-port or a blue-tooth and thus it can be connected with a desktop, laptop, tablet or even a smart-phone using open source programs and apps. Specific apps can easily be developed for any platform on customer request.
The adoption of a standard lap-top, tablet or smart-phone as control unit enables the immediate availability of data and procedures such as GPS coordinates recording, or WiFi/GPRS networking. The instrument can display environmental data such as Temperature, Pressure and relative Humidity.
This made it possible to have minute by minute a PM2.5 measurement  available to everyone through the web.  Data are made available in the “PM Data” section of this web site.

( for an example of data continuously collected over a period of almost three years see the URL: www.PM2.5firenze.it).

System specifications

Dimensions	(L) 318mm × (W) 257mm × (H) 152mm
Weigth	~5  kg (with 120Wh battery pack)  ;  ~3 kg (without battery pack)
Power Consumption	~5 W (15W peak -with maximum pump flow and during calibration )
Battery Operation time	18-24 Hours (with 24V/5Ah battery pack) (Charging time <3 h)
Measuring time	set by the user between 1 and 120 sec
Calibration	automatic calibration, time lapse between calibrations set by the user
Resolution	~1 μg/m3 for 30 sec measurements
Internal memory	more than 2 GByte on control unit
Sampling flow	between 0.8 and 3.0 Nl/min, set by the user
I/O Interface	USB & Blue-tooth (virtual-com standard protocol)
Optional	Backup battery packs Membrane Filter cartridge for PM analysis

 

   LCT-14 PM Meter specs data

  LCT-14 Operation Manual (G1) (years 2014-2015)

  LCT-14 Operation Manual (G2) (years 2016-2017) [Italian]