Extending the Faraday cup aerosol electrometer based calibration method up to 5 µm

Abstract

A Faraday cup aerosol electrometer based electrical aerosol instrument calibration setup from nanometers up to micrometers has been designed, constructed, and characterized. The set-up utilizes singly charged seed particles, which are grown to the desired size by condensation of diethylhexyl sebacate. The calibration particle size is further selected with a Differential Mobility Analyzer (DMA). For micrometer sizes, a large DMA was designed, constructed, and characterized. The DMA electrical mobility resolution was found to be 7.95 for 20 L/min sheath and 2 L/min sample flows. The calibration is based on comparing the instrument’s response against the concentration measured with a reference Faraday cup aerosol electrometer. The set-up produces relatively high concentrations in the micrometer size range (more than 2500 1/cm3 at 5.3 µm). A low bias flow mixing and splitting between the reference and the instrument was constructed from a modified, large-sized mixer and a four-port flow splitter. It was characterized at different flow rates and as a function of the particle size. Using two of the four outlet ports at equal 1.5 L/min flow rates, the particle concentration bias of the flow splitting was found to be less than ±1% in the size range of 3.6 nm–5.3 µm. The developed calibration set-up was used to define the detection efficiency of a condensation particle counter from 3.6 nm to 5.3 µm with an expanded measurement uncertainty (k = 2) of less than 4% over the entire size range and less than 2% for most of the measurement points. Copyright © 2018 American Association for Aerosol Research.