The detection and measurement of the electrical mobility size distributions associated with radon decay products
- Clarkson Univ., Potsdam, NY (United States)
The potential risk of lung cancer has evoked interest in the properties of radon decay products. There are two forms of this progeny: either attached to ambient aerosols, or still in the status of ions/molecules/small clusters. This ``unattached`` activity would give a higher dose per unit of airborne activity than the ``attached`` progeny that are rather poorly deposited. In this thesis, a system for determining unattached radon decay products electrical mobility size distribution by measuring their electrical mobilities was developed, based on the fact that about 88% of {sup 218}Po atoms have unit charge at the end of their recoil after decay from 222Rn, while the remainder are neutral. Essential part of the setup is the radon-aerosol chamber with the Circular Electrical Mobility Spectrometer (CEMS) inside. CEMS is used for sampling and classifying the charged radioactive clusters produced in the chamber. An alpha- sensitive plastic, CR-39 disk, is placed in CEMS as an inlaid disk electrode and the alpha particle detector. CEMS showed good performance in fine inactive particles` classification. If it also works well for radon decay products, it can offer a convenient size distribution measurement for radioactive ultrafine particles. However, the experiments did not obtain an acceptable resolution. Suggestions are made for solving this problem.
- Research Organization:
- Clarkson Univ., Potsdam, NY (United States). Dept. of Chemistry
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-90ER61029
- OSTI ID:
- 219261
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/61029-20; ON: DE96009532; TRN: 96:012774
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: TH: Thesis (M.S.); PBD: Apr 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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