AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Traceable CPC Calibration in a Wide Particle Size Range: From 10 Nanometer up to 10 Micrometer
JAAKKO YLI-OJANPERÄ, Hiromu Sakurai, Kenjiro Iida, Jyrki M. Mäkelä, Kensei Ehara, Jorma Keskinen, Tampere University of Technology
Abstract Number: 104 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Aerosol particle measurement is widely applied for example in clean rooms of production facilities and in studying the particulate emissions from traffic and industry. In these applications, the particle number concentration is of particular interest because it is limited by standards and/or legislation. However, the calibration of the applied instruments (e.g. OPCs/CPCs) is very challenging for at least two reasons. Firstly, traceable calibration services are offered only by few institutes (e.g. Fletcher et al., 2009; Schlatter, 2009; Sakurai and Ehara, 2011). Secondly, no single standard can cover the measuring particle size range of these instruments, which can be several orders of magnitude.
In our recent study, a comparison between three number concentration standards was conducted by calibrating the same CPC unit (Model 3772, TSI Inc.) with each standard (Yli-Ojanperä et al., 2012). All together, the calibration results cover the particle size range between 10 nanometer and 10 micro-meters without gaps in the size axis. The standards were: the primary NCS of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, Japan), the Single Charged Aerosol Reference (SCAR, Finland) and the Inkjet Aerosol Generator (IAG) of AIST. All of the measurements were carried out at AIST in the same laboratory.
The results obtained with the three standards were found to agree within the uncertainty limits at all overlapping particle sizes. As a result of this study, a traceable calibration that covers the whole operating particle size range of the CPC was carried out for the first time (Yli-Ojanperä et al., 2012). Interesting calibration results will be presented.
Fletcher et al. (2009), Aerosol Sci. Technol., 43, 425-441.
Sakurai, H. and Ehara, K. (2011) Meas. Sci. Technol,. 22 024009
Schlatter, J. (2009) Final Report of EURAMET Project 1027 (www.euramet.org)
Yli-Ojanperä et al. (2012), Submitted to Aerosol Sci. Technol.