AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
A Cost-Effective Method of Aerosolizing Dry Powdered Nanomaterials
Andrea Tiwari, LINSEY MARR, Caleb Fields, Virginia Tech
Abstract Number: 759 Working Group: Nanoparticles and Materials Synthesis
Abstract The growth of nanotechnology has led to increased concerns about the toxicity of aerosolized nanomaterials. Producing aerosolized nanomaterials in an environmentally relevant form for inhalation toxicology studies can be a challenge. Wet methods such as spray-drying can alter particle chemistry, and commercially available dry powder dispersers cannot easily generate sub-100 nm aerosols.
This work demonstrates the production of nanoscale aerosols from dry powdered nanomaterials using an inexpensive vacuum generator (Tang et al, 187:27-36, Powder Technology) to disperse engineered materials into a chamber. Tested nanomaterials include C$_(60) fullerenes and TiO$_2 (original particle size 30-50 nm). The resulting aerosol size distributions were measured using a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) and aerodynamic particle sizer (APS).
Results show that this system may be used to easily disperse dry nanostructured materials into aerosols which have a size distribution peaking near or below 100 nm. Aerosol mass concentrations achieved using this system range from 0.3 – 5 x 10$^3 micrograms m$^-3. The number and mass concentration output of the system can be controlled by loading different amounts of the nanomaterial into the disperser. This control is afforded by a linear relationship between loaded nanomaterial mass and particle mass output.
This aerosol production system offers a simple and inexpensive alternative to commercially available dispersion instruments. Since spray-drying and other ‘wet’ techniques require creating a liquid suspension that may alter particle chemistry, this approach using dry particles may be preferable in some cases for generating sub-100 nm aerosols from nanomaterials for inhalation toxicology and aerosol chemistry research.