Design and Evaluation of a Personal Diffusion Battery

Abstract

A four-stage personal diffusion battery (pDB) was designed and constructed to measure submicron particle size distributions. The pDB consisted of a screen-type diffusion battery, solenoid valve system, and electronic controller. A data inversion spreadsheet was created to solve for the number median diameter (NMD), geometric standard deviation (GSD), and particle number concentration of unimodal aerosols using stage number concentrations from the pDB combined with a handheld condensation particle counter (pDB+CPC). The inversion spreadsheet included particle entry losses, theoretical penetrations across screens, the detection efficiency of the CPC, and constraints so the spreadsheet solved to values within the pDB range. Size distribution parameters (NMD, GSD, and number concentration) measured with the pDB+CPC with inversion spreadsheet were within 25% of those measured with a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) for 5 of 12 polydisperse combustion aerosols. For three tests conducted with propylene torch exhaust, the pDB+CPC with inversion spreadsheet successfully identified that the NMD was smaller than the constraint value of 16 nm. The ratio of the nanoparticle portion of the aerosol compared to the reference () was calculated to determine the ability of pDB+CPC with inversion spreadsheet to measure the nanoparticle portion of the aerosols. The ranged from 0.87 to 1.01 when the inversion solved and from 0.06 to 2.01 when the inversion solved to a constraint. The pDB combined with CPC has limited use as a personal monitor but combining the pDB with a different detector would allow for the pDB to be used as a personal monitor.

Development of a Portable Aerosol Collector and Spectrometer (PACS)

“…& Size-Resolved devices to both measure and collect particles by size for chemical analysis. For example, Vosburgh et al (2013) combined a personal diffusion battery for size separation with a CPC to provide the aerosol size distributions of sub-micrometer particles. Similarly, the number concentration and size were collected using a combination of CPC and an ELPI (Brachert et al, 2014).…”

Aerosol diffusion battery: The retrieval of particle size distribution with the help of analytical formulas

“…The need to measure aerosol spectra has grown during the last few decades in various fields of science and technology. The most important areas for the application of aerosol techniques include the ambient air quality studies (Harrison 1986;Manzoor and Kulshrestha 2015;Fuzzi et al 2015;Sabbagh-Kupelwieser et al 2010), nanoaerosol medicine (Sanders 2011;Carvalho et al 2015), nanotechnology (Biskos et al 2008), occupational health (Volkwein et al 2011;Vosburgh et al 2013;Gorbunov et al 2009) and others.…”

“…Another well-established method to measure the nanoparticle size distribution is the diffusion battery (Knutson 1999), which is free from the above-mentioned disadvantages. Diffusion batteries are simple and well suited for use in the open air (Dubtsov et al 2017), to measure the occupational exposure (Vosburgh et al 2013;Gorbunov et al 2009), and for laboratory measurements Onischuk et al 2016a,b).…”

Development of a portable aerosol collector and spectrometer (PACS)

“…Researchers have combined Time-Resolved & Size-Integrated and Time-Integrated & Size-Resolved devices to both measure and collect particles by size for chemical analysis. For example, Vosburgh et al (2013) combined a personal diffusion battery for size separation with a CPC to provide the aerosol size distributions of sub-micrometer particles. Similarly, the number concentration and size were collected using a combination of CPC and an ELPI (Brachert et al, 2014).…”