Radon and VOCs detection goes personal
While smoke detectors are compulsory in numerous European countries, other detectors of volatile organic compounds are reaching the consumer market too, but we rarely hear about radon detection.
Yet, this naturally occurring radioactive gas is believed, according to the World Health Organization, to be the second cause of lung cancer after smoking, possibly responsible for 21,000 deaths per year in the US alone. In the US, one house in 15 is considered to be at risk. In Italy, 1.500 to 6.000 deaths per year are attributed to radon
In the 2012 proceedings of the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, both the company’s CEO Luca Bidinelli and RSens’ CTO Andrea Bosi together with other researchers from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (including their scientific adviser, Professor Giovanni Verzellesi) unveiled a silicon radiation detector with internal signal-amplification based on the Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) effect.
The paper explains that while charged radon daughters are collected on the detector surface electrostatically, the BJT internal amplification allows the detection of alpha particles in real-time, using very simple readout electronics to record alpha-particle arrival time and charge.
This gave way to a first product, the Rstone, combining commercially available VOC sensors with RSens’ proprietary radon sensor in a small shoe-box sized apparatus for the professional radon detection market.
“While competing professional solutions typically cost from 4,000 to 15,000 euros, Rstone’s pricing varies from 1,000 to about 2,000 euros”, explained Bidinelli in an interview with eeNews Europe.
But if the professional market only represents a few hundred units in Europe for RSens, the company is now entering the US market which it estimates to be about ten times bigger.
Now RSens is looking at the much larger consumer market with a stripped-down cheaper version, “Because for the professional market, there are more built-in sensors as they require more environmental parameters”, explained Bidinelli.
“For the consumer version, we have integrated all the reading electronics into the same chip doing the radon detection”, he added.
RSens has just launched an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign for ARIA, a small WiFi-enabled whale-shaped product it plans to market for 249 US dollars.
As well as monitoring the levels of radon (from 0.4 to 1700pCi/L) and indoor pollutants (including VOCs such as alcohols, aldehydes, aliphatic hydrocarbons, amines, aromatic hydrocarbons, CO, CH4, LPG, ketone, organic acids and others), the unit has been designed to be part of the connected home.
“We’ve found there is a trend for more networked sensors in the home, and while there are lots of cheap commercial solutions for VOC indoor air quality monitoring, none connect to your ventilation system”, explained Bidinelli.
“The added value of our solution is that it is very fast and reliable for radon detection as well as for VOCs, and it can automatically activate your ventilation system so you don’t have to worry about indoor pollution. We are making it Nest-compatible too”, he concluded.
ARIA sits on a shelf and its LEDs provide immediate visual cues on air quality while it also streams detailed information to a mobile app which displays detailed graphical reports and sends alerts.
Another light in the IoT constellation, will it find its public? The future will tell. 60 days remain for RSens to reach its USD 95,000 goal on IndieGoGo.
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