Advance Aerosol Separator for Planetary Exploration
PAUL CARPENTER, Dragan Nikolic, David Keicher,
Integrated Deposition Solutions Inc. (IDS) Abstract Number: 265
Working Group: Planetary Aerosols: From Earth to Exoplanets
AbstractIntegrated Deposition Solutions Inc. (IDS), the premier supplier of aerosol printing technology and manufacturer of the NanoJet line of aerosol printers, developed an aerosol separator (AS) for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for use with an aerosol mass spectrometer to investigate the chemistry of planetary atmospheres. IDS was awarded Phase 1 and Phase 2 SBIR grants to develop a robust particle separating apparatus that could survive launch from Earth, entry into the Venus atmosphere, and 12 months of continuous sampling of the atmosphere surrounding Venus. The AS is a key component between a throttling inlet valve, that is exposed to the planetary atmosphere, and a mass spectrometer’s vaporizer. The function of this device is to separate the atmospheric aerosol’s gas and liquid constituents, concentrate and collimate the extracted liquid into a narrow particle beam that can traverse several centimeters within a vacuum, and maintain a high transmission efficiency. IDS leveraged the technology within the NanoJet print head to develop a flow cell that focuses the incoming stream of highly corrosive aerosol into a particle beam approximately 2mm in diameter while removing the atmospheric gas. Test results have shown this particle beam is able to travel over 20cm, in a high vacuum, and impact a target in an adjacent vacuum chamber. The vacuum chamber adjacent to the AS on the testing setup acted as an analog to the mass spectrometer vaporizer chamber. While initially developed as a key instrumentation component for planetary atmospheric research, there are many potential commercial, industrial, regulatory, and other scientific applications for the IDS Aerosol Separator technology.
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