BUSTED: Calibrating sensors every six months will help with sensor accuracy but will not solve offset drift. Aircuity’s differential measurement approach uses one sensor to measure the reference and the room air to eliminate offset drift, which is the largest component of drift. Even with 6-month calibration, the offset drift can be very large after only a few weeks. Field calibration addresses the gain and linearity drift, which occur at a slower rate.
Furthermore, to address and deliver optimal sensor accuracy, Aircuity directly compensates for barometric pressure and is not susceptible to impact of humidity. Commercial CO2 sensors do not, and both of these effects can vary the output of the sensor by as much as 100 PPM. Finally, Aircuity filters the air going to the sensors to again limit the gain and linearity drifts.
So, calibrating discrete CO2 sensors every 6 months will not solve these accuracy and drift issues and, thus greatly have far less accuracy compared to Aircuity. For acceptable performance at minimum, there must be differential measurement, barometric compensation, no humidity influence, and filtering of the sensed air with a HEPA grade filter.