Efficient electrostatic sampling of aerosols into liquid

• Despite an increasing demand for the identification and quantification of airborne pathogens, there is an unmet need for point-of-care instruments that provide both capture and analysis of bioaerosols. The integration of electrostatic precipitation of aerosol particles directly into liquid with lab-on-a-chip-based biomolecular analysis has been previously suggested as a promising solution for this purpose.This work investigates liquid collector designs for such instruments. We hypothesize that the geometry of the collector; and the position of its air-liquid interface with respect to the electrostatic field and aerosol flow, can be optimized for a maximum sample concentration.We designed four liquid collectors with a small form factor, adapted for concatenating point-to-plane electrostatic precipitators with integrated downstream analysis. The collectors were evaluated for their absolute mass collection and their sample concentration, by sampling radioactive aerosol and color dye aerosol. Collectors with their air-liquid surface parallel to the charged aerosol flow performed significantly better than those shaped as a cup with an air-liquid surface perpendicular to the flow. Whereas the electrostatic precipitators with the best performing collector designs captured only 32% of the aerosol mass compared to a commercial impinger, their resulting sample concentration was 4 times higher.    

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Annan elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Electrostatic precipitation; Bioaerosol; Point-of-care; Microfluidic collection; Corona discharge; Air sampling

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)