Tagging Emissions from Indoor Biomass Combustion with a Cost-Effective Sensor Array: From Design to Field Deployment in Rural Indian Households.

In this study, we introduce an innovative method for monitoring emissions from indoor biomass combustion, a prevalent practice in rural households in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Our approach utilizes a portable and cost-efficient sensor array with advanced data handling, employing commercially available sensors to measure CO, CO, NO, SO, PMs, VOC, NOx, cookstove and ambient temperature, relative humidity, and pressure. We developed hardware and software to gather and process sensor data and control the temperature cycle using the BME688 sensors. The field deployments reveal that CO emission from a cooking event is ∼2.3 ± 1.5 kg CO per family. Extrapolating this data, the total emissions from biomass (e.g., fuelwood, crop residues, animal dung, and charcoal) for household cooking in rural areas of India are estimated to be around 0.6 ± 0.4 teragrams (Tg) of CO per day. The integration of dual BME688 sensors, leveraging the standard Bosch Software Environmental Cluster library and temperature cycling, achieves an impressive 95% accuracy in fingerprinting emissions from different fuel types. This capability enables the creation of a comprehensive database, where each CO emission data point is meticulously linked to the original biomass source. This level of real-time detail, previously unattainable, greatly enhances our ability for emission quantification and offers broad applicability for mitigation efforts.