AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
A Compact Electrical Particle Sizer for Wireless Sensor Network to Monitor Fine and Ultrafine Particles
Qiaoling Liu, DA-REN CHEN, Virginia Commonwealth University
Abstract Number: 245 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Wireless sensor network based on particle sensors are in high demand for emerging applications such as continuous monitoring of spatial/surface distribution of fine and ultrafine particles (UFPs) in local communities, air quality and traffic monitoring in smart cities, early fire detection in buildings and hospitals, worker protection in the nanomaterial facility, vertical UFP profiling, and many others. Cost-effective and light-weighted particle sensors in a compact package are required to realize the above applications under the consideration of budget limit. A miniature electric ultrafine particle sizer (mini-eUPS) was thus developed to meet the above fine and ultrafine monitoring task.
A prototype mini-eUPS primarily consists of a mini-plate aerosol charger for electrically charging sampled particles, a mini-plate DMA for particle sizing based on particle electrical mobility and a mini Faraday cage with sensitive pre-amp for measuring electrical charges carried by charged particles. The mini-plate aerosol charger, mini-plate DMA and mini- Faraday cage were individually calibrated prior to the assembly. A data-reduction scheme was developed to quickly recover the size distribution of particles from the measured raw data. Together with all flow control units and circuits to properly operate aerosol charger, DMA and electrometer and an embedded computer, the overall package size and weight of mini- eUPS are 5" (L) × 5" (W) × 6" (H) and 3 lb, respectively. In addition to the measurement of particle size distribution, each mini-eUPS further equips with the capability of recording temperature, relatively humidity, pressure, timing, GPS and altitude of the samples. The prototype mini-eUPS can be used either as a single-alone sensor or a node in wireless sensor network. Laboratory and field experiments are being conducted to evaluate the performance of mini-eUPSs. The detail of this study will be present in this talk.