AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
A Micro-Liter Vaporization Condensation Aerosol Generator
JOHN CARPIN, US ARMY
Abstract Number: 339 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract A generation system has been developed for producing a highly concentrated output of a nearly monodisperse aerosol from a small volume (less than one milliliter) of low volatility material. The approach used is a modification of the classic vaporization/condensation technique in which a material is vaporized and allowed to recondense onto non-volatile “seed” particles resulting in the formation of an aerosol of narrow size distribution. A high vaporization rate is achieved with small volumes of liquid through the use of a custom designed saturator cell and oven. This has proven to be a highly efficient approach for producing test aerosols in the 1 to 5 micrometer size range with high output mass concentrations. Stable operation can be achieved for 60 minutes with loading volumes as low as 200 microliters. This technique has potential applicability to aerosol testing when it is desirable to keep working quantities of test materials to a minimum.