AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Collection Efficiency of a New Portable Electrostatic Precipitator (BIODOSI) Designed for the Collection of Airborne Pathogens
ROLAND SARDA-ESTEVE, Jean-Maxime Roux, Jean Sciare, Guillaume Delapierre, Marie-Helene Nadal, LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ)
Abstract Number: 741 Working Group: Homeland Security
Abstract A portable (<500g), silent, and autonomous (several hours) bioaerosol collector (BIODOSI) is currently being developed at CEA with the final objective to collect very efficiently airborne pathogens such as supermicron bacteria and spores but also submicron viruses which potential is often lacking for existing portable biocollectors. Particles are collected on a dry surface and concentrated afterwards in a small liquid medium to be analyzed by culture, PCR, immunoassays, mass spectrometry, Raman spectroscopy, to name a few. To be representative of individual exposure, the nominal flowrate of the BIODOSI collector is chosen to be closed to human breathing (10 LPM). This low flowrate also meets the compactness required for a portable and silent instrument which gets rid of heavy and noisy pumping systems. A brief description of the first BIODOSI prototype is provided here. The aerosol collection efficiency of this first prototype is also presented. It was performed by using non biological particles (NaCl, KCl) for a wide range of aerosol sizes. Based on SMPS measurements, very high collection efficiencies (>98%) were observed for 22 size bins ranging from 10nm to 800nm demonstrating the potential of the BIODOSI to collect submicron bioaerosols. Qualifications in ambient conditions have been also performed leading to similar high collection efficiencies for submicron and supermicron particles. Further qualifications in ambient conditions are currently performed in which specific polysaccharides (mannitol, arabitol) are used to trace ambient fungal spores (Bauer et al., 2008) and chemically determine the collection efficiency of the BIODOSI for this class of bioaerosols.
Reference: Bauer, H. et al., Arabitol and mannitol as tracers for the quantification of airborne fungal spores, Atmospheric Environment, 42, 588–593, 2008.