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Title: Low power acoustic harvesting of aerosols

Conference ·

A new acoustic device for levitation and/or concentration of aerosols and sniall liquid/solid samples (up to several millimeters in diameter) in air has been developed. The device is inexpensive, low-power, and, in its simplest embodiment, does not require accurate alignmen1 of a resonant cavity. It is constructed from a cylindrical PZT tube of outside diameter D = 19.0 mm and thickness-to-radius ratio h/a - 0.03. The lowest-order breathing mode of the tube is tuned to match a resonant mode of the interior air-filled cylindrical cavity. A high Q cavity results that can be driven efficiently. An acoustic standing wave is created in the inteirior cavity of the cylindrical shell where particle concrmtration takes place at the nodal planes of the field. It is shown that drops of water in excess of 1 mm in diameter may be levitated against the force of gravity for approxirnately 100 mW of input electrical power. The main objective of the research is to implement this lowpower device to concentrate and harvest aerosols in a flowing system. Several different cavity geonietries iwe presented for efficient collection of 1 he conaartratetl aerosols. Concentraiion factors greater than 40 iue demonstrated for particles of size 0.7 1.1 in a flow volume of 50 L/minute.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
OSTI ID:
975822
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-01-5704; TRN: US201018%%908
Resource Relation:
Journal Volume: 1; Conference: Submitted to: 2001 IEEE International Ultrasonic Symposium, October 2001, Atlanta.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English