i
Assessment of increased sampling pump flow rates in a disposable, inhalable aerosol sampler
-
3 2017
-
-
Source: J Occup Environ Hyg. 14(3):207-213
[PDF-617.36 KB]
Details:
-
Alternative Title:J Occup Environ Hyg
-
Personal Author:
-
Description:A newly designed, low-cost, disposable inhalable aerosol sampler was developed to assess workers personal exposure to inhalable particles. This sampler was originally designed to operate at 10 L/min to increase sample mass and, therefore, improve analytical detection limits for filter-based methods. Computational fluid dynamics modeling revealed that sampler performance (relative to aerosol inhalability criteria) would not differ substantially at sampler flows of 2 and 10 L/min. With this in mind, the newly designed inhalable aerosol sampler was tested in a wind tunnel, simultaneously, at flows of 2 and 10 L/min flow. A mannequin was equipped with 6 sampler/pump assemblies (three pumps operated at 2 L/min and three pumps at 10 L/min) inside a wind tunnel, operated at 0.2 m/s, which has been shown to be a typical indoor workplace wind speed. In separate tests, four different particle sizes were injected to determine if the sampler's performance with the new 10 L/min flow rate significantly differed to that at 2 L/min. A comparison between inhalable mass concentrations using a Wilcoxon signed rank test found no significant difference in the concentration of particles sampled at 10 and 2 L/min for all particle sizes tested. Our results suggest that this new aerosol sampler is a versatile tool that can improve exposure assessment capabilities for the practicing industrial hygienist by improving the limit of detection and allowing for shorting sampling times.
-
Subjects:
-
Keywords:
-
Source:
-
Pubmed ID:27676440
-
Pubmed Central ID:PMC5724042
-
Document Type:
-
Funding:
-
Volume:14
-
Issue:3
-
Collection(s):
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
