AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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A Test and Evaluation (T and E) Capability for Aerosolised Hazardous Materials
SARAH MARCHANT, Peter Jones, Will Sellors, Maurice Walker, Andy Martin, Buckley Margaret, Dstl, Porton Down, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP4 0JQ, UK
Abstract Number: 869 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Introduction A chemical aerosol Test and Evaluation (T&E) facility has been designed and built at Dstl, Porton Down that allows the reproducible generation of aerosols of hazardous chemicals. This has involved undertaking a detailed safety investigation to ensure there was no risk to the operator, observers or environment. The aim has been to design a T&E facility that can safely test detection systems against toxic chemical aerosols in a ‘dial-up’ manner for prolonged test periods.
Experimental Method and Results The chemical aerosol test facility has been installed at Dstl, Porton Down and it enables the robust, reliable and reproducible T&E of aerosol detection technologies. This provides an understanding of the potential of such detection technologies to meet the needs of future requirements. The chemical aerosol test facility is constructed of stainless steel tubing with aluminium gaskets and has a total length of 1600 mm. A novel method of aerosol generation is presented that produces particles of the hazardous chemicals with a size range of 0.25 µm to 3 µm. The system runs at a negative pressure (-1.5 mbar) to minimise the potential of leaks and the total aerosol concentration can be tuned over a relevant dynamic range. Chemical sensors can be connected to the flow tube and their performance against the aerosolised chemicals can be assessed. The aerosol concentration within the flow tube is constantly monitored using a Grimm Mini-LAS 11.R and this is confirmed off-line with DAAMS sample tubes analysed by LC-MS.
Conclusions This work has led to the safe generation of aerosols of hazardous materials (including Chemical Warfare Agents). These aerosols can be generated at a stable concentration for up to two hours and have been confirmed by off-line analysis. Currently, Dstl is using this capability to generate test aerosols for the T&E of prototype Chemical Detection equipment.