A Diethylene Glycol Condensation Particle Counter for Rapid Sizing of sub-3 nm Atmospheric Clusters
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
AbstractThis paper describes the modification of a laminar flow, thermally diffusive universal-fluid condensation particle counter (standard operation: 50% detection efficiency at 5 nm) to rapidly measure the size distribution of sub 3 nm aerosol. Sub 3 nm detection was achieved by using diethylene glycol as the working fluid, which enabled high instrument super-saturations while minimizing homogenous nucleation of the working fluid; a detection efficiency of 50% was achieved at 1.6 nm with laboratory-generated ammonium sulfate aerosol. Rapid aerosol sizing beneath 3 nm was achieved by inverting the measured grown droplet size distribution (1 second sampling) to recover the sampled aerosol size distribution. The developed inversion algorithm utilizes analytical kernel functions determined from the instrument response to pseudo-monodisperse ammonium sulfate aerosol from 1.5 nm to 20 nm, generated by a high resolution DMA and a nano DMA. The inversion algorithm was tested numerically with assumed, idealized aerosol size distributions consistent with observed new particle formation events, yielding reasonable agreement between inverted and assumed aerosol size distributions below 3 nm. Furthermore, this technique provides a measure of the aerosol size assuming an aerosol composition identical to that of the aerosol used to generate the experimentally determined kernel function.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0012704
- OSTI ID:
- 1460820
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-207861-2018-JAAM
- Journal Information:
- Aerosol Science and Technology, Vol. 52, Issue 10; ISSN 0278-6826
- Publisher:
- American Association for Aerosol ResearchCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
New Particle Formation in the Atmosphere: From Molecular Clusters to Global Climate
|
journal | July 2019 |
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