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Bioaerosol concentrator performance: comparative tests with viable and with solid and liquid nonviable particles
J Kesavan1, J R Bottiger, A R McFarland
1Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, US ARMY ECBC-RT-TA E5951, U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Aberdeen, MD 21010, USA. jana.kesavan@us.army.mil
Aims:
Generally it is more economical to first characterize a concentrator system with nonbiological particles followed by more rigorous bioaerosol testing. This study compares sampling system performance for various particle types and sizes.
Methods And Results:
Performances of five concentrators were characterized with five nonviable and viable laboratory aerosols, although not every concentrator was tested with all aerosol types. For particle sizes less than c. 6 microm aerodynamic diameter, similar efficiencies are obtained for all test particles; however, for larger sizes there is a significant difference between liquid and dry particles.
Conclusions:
Aluminium oxide particles provide results over a broad range of sizes with a single test, but the method is less reproducible than other methods. A combination of monodisperse polystyrene spheres and oleic acid droplets provides an accurate representation of the system performance, but ultimately biological particle tests are needed.
Significance And Impact Of The Study:
Devices are being developed for concentrating bioaerosol particles in the size range of 1-10 microm aerodynamic diameter and this study provides insight into data quality for different test methodologies. Also, the results show some current concentrators perform quite poorly.
