10th International Aerosol Conference September 2 - September 7, 2018 America's Center Convention Complex St. Louis, Missouri, USA
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Evaluation of the Performance of a Lightweight, 3D Printed SMPS
KONSTANTINOS BARMPOUNIS, Anne Maisser, George Biskos, AK LemonLabs Ltd.
Abstract Number: 1243 Working Group: Low-Cost and Portable Sensors
Abstract Monitoring the quality of the air, and particularly the concentration and size of airborne particles, is increasingly important for assessing the impacts of air pollution on human health and climate. Most of the existing and commercially available instruments for measuring atmospheric aerosol particles are bulky and expensive, thereby limiting the density of the monitoring networks around the world. In order to circumvent these limitations many efforts have been made to develop mobile and lightweight instrument for aerosol measurements in the recent past. However, the vast majority of these efforts go at the expense of counting and/or sizing resolution, or require a lot of engineering efforts, and are thus very expensive.
The approach used here to develop a cost-effective nanoparticle monitoring holds great potential for revolutionizing the manufacturing of instruments. This is done by replacing heavy stainless steel parts by extremely lightweight plastic parts, coated with a graphite layer for conductivity. The method has been already introduced by Barmpounis et al. in 2016 and has been further developed since. The major advantage of using plastic pieces is that they are extremely inexpensive, very easy to manufacture, and enable reduction of weight by more than an order of magnitude.
Here we will present the results of a performance evaluation of an SMPS system consisting of a 3D printed Differential Mobility Analyzer (DMA) and a 3D printed Faraday Cage Electrometer (FCE). The dimensions of the DMA are identical to the instrument described by Barmpounis et al. The total weight of the instrument is only 3kg.
In order to confirm the robustness and reproducibility of the manufacturing technique we have built and tested 5 SMPS systems. The performances of the DMAS were evaluated in a tandem DMA system, where we used a homemade stainless steel DMA as a classifying DMA. The 3D printed DMAs were scanning over the entire size range. The FCE were tested using a Condensation Particle Counter and a commercial FCE in parallel.
In conclusion we found the 3D printed manufacturing technique to be appropriate for producing highly reproducible and robust instruments. This new manufacturing technology can largely contribute into the wider distribution of SMPS measurement devices leading into a tighter meshed network of monitoring stations on a global scale as a second step. In addition, such systems are suitable for use onboard of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). More efforts are currently put into the development of a CPC using a similar approach to enable detection of low concentrations of particles, which is crucial for ambient measurements.
References:
K. Barmpounis, A. Maisser, A. Schmidt-Ott, G. Biskos, “Lightweight Differential Mobility Analyzers: Towards new and Inexpensive manufacturing Methods” Aerosol Sci. Technol., 50, (2016).