AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Measurement of Aerosols Generated by Combustion of Different Materials
SERGEY A. GRINSHPUN, Jin Yong Kim, Michael Yermakov, Shuang Gao, Tiina Reponen, Pramod Kulkarni, University of Cincinnati
Abstract Number: 101 Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract The real-time measurement of concentration and particle size distribution of combustion aerosols is crucial for assessing the aerosol exposure and developing appropriate control strategies. In this effort, we deployed four aerosol instruments to measure aerosols generated by burning wood, paper and plastic in a 25 cubic meter exposure chamber. The chamber facility was used to simulate an exposure of fire fighters during the fire overhaul operations. One instrument was a non-size-selective condensation particle counter (P-Trak, TSI, Inc., St. Paul, MN, USA); three others were recently developed particle size spectrometers: Nanocheck (Grimm Technologies, Inc., Ainring, Germany), Nano-ID (Particle Measuring Systems, Inc., Boulder, CO, USA), and PAMS (Kanomax-USA, Inc., Andover, NJ, USA). The total aerosol concentration values obtained with the P-Trak were consistently lower than those measured with the three particle size spectrometers, which can be associated with differences in the operational particle size ranges. The size distributions recorded by the particle size spectrometers for the tested combustion materials were primarily single-mode with peaks observed in a range from 30 to 60 nm. The possible reasons behind the similarities and differences between data produced by different instruments have been reviewed. The feasibility of the four tested measurement methods for characterizing combustion aerosols and human exposure in the laboratory and field settings is discussed.
This work was supported by NIOSH (Contracts 200-2013-M-56581 and 214-2013-M-54654).