A state-of-the-art facility, “High-Volume PM10 Sampler”, has been established at the Environmental Sciences and Biomedical Metrology Division of CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL), New Delhi, and is providing services to Indian manufacturers and industries in this area. Further, particulate matter of size 10 micrometres and less, called PM10, is one of the important criteria pollutants of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Whether the air quality is good or bad is mostly governed by the concentration of particulate matter in ambient air. Therefore, accurate measurement of PM10 is very important. This is also needed because PM10 are inhalable particles and can impact from the throat to the lungs in our respiratory tract and, hence, harmful to our health. A perfect PM10 sampler is needed to know the ambient concentration and further analyse the chemical constituents of PM10, which may be toxic. Generally, for chemical and biological analyses of PM10 samples, a high-volume sampler is required. Similarly, for analysis of other criteria pollutants, e.g. lead, arsenic, and nickel in PM, a high-volume sampler is recommended because a sufficient amount of PM material is needed for these analyses after the sampling.

The “High-Volume PM10 Sampler” technology, indigenously designed and developed at CSIR-NPL, has been transferred to an MSME, M/s Biomimicry Technologies Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, during the Innovative and Sustainable Business Strategies (ISBS) workshop as part of the CSIR 100 Days 100 Technologies Programme at CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad, on 27 January 2025. The participants from several industries and different CSIR laboratories attended and addressed the one-day workshop.

This is the first high-volume PM10 technology developed in India. Importantly, available technology in India is the Respirable Dust Sampler (RDS) PM10, whose cutoff size is 4 micrometres (not 10 micrometres in reality, which is the requirement of a sampler as per Indian NAAQS and ISO 7708).  The Indian patent of this technology is published and waiting for the final grant. More scientific details about this technology and development can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-023-01384-3.