AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Exploring the Applicability and Limitations of Selected Optical Scattering Instruments for PM Mass Measurement
JIE ZHANG, Joseph P. Marto, James Schwab, University at Albany, SUNY
Abstract Number: 472 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Three optical scattering instruments for PM mass measurement were evaluated in our laboratory using poly- and monodisperse test aerosols. Two instruments are commercially mature instruments (the Thermo Personal DataRAM (pDR-1500), and the TSI Environmental DustTrak DRX (Model 8543)) and one is a newly developed low cost PM sensor (the Alphasense Optical Counter (OPC-N2)). Monodisperse test aerosol (NH4HSO4, black carbon, PSLs and other pure species) were produced by a constant output atomizer and characterized by a TSI scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) system. Larger particles can be generated with a vibrating orifice aerosol generator. The response of these three optical scattering instruments to different particle characteristics (size, composition, concentration) were measured and used to evaluate the performance of these instruments. At the same time, particle mass concentration from these three instruments were compared with the SMPS determined concentrations to study the applicability and limitations of these optical scattering instruments for measurements of PM mass concentration. The detailed laboratory evaluation and comparison of these three optical scattering methods will provide guidance to the suitable application for each instrument when considering accuracy and precision as well as cost.