title: Development and evaluation of an ultrasonic personal aerosol sampler.
abstract: Assessing personal exposure to air pollution has long proven challenging due to technological limitations posed by the samplers themselves. Historically, wearable aerosol monitors have proven to be expensive, noisy, and burdensome. The objective of this work was to develop a new type of wearable monitor, an ultrasonic personal aerosol sampler (UPAS), to overcome many of the technological limitations in personal exposure assessment. The UPAS is a time-integrated monitor that features a novel micropump that is virtually silent during operation. A suite of onboard environmental sensors integrated with this pump measure and record mass airflow (0.5-3.0 L/min, accurate within 5%), temperature, pressure, relative humidity, light intensity, and acceleration. Rapid development of the UPAS was made possible through recent advances in low-cost electronics, open-source programming platforms, and additive manufacturing for rapid prototyping. Interchangeable cyclone inlets provided a close match to the EPA PM2.5mass criterion (within 5%) for device flows at either 1.0 or 2.0 L/min. Battery life varied from 23 to 45 hours depending on sample flow rate and selected filter media. Laboratory tests of the UPAS prototype demonstrate excellent agreement with equivalent federal reference method samplers for gravimetric analysis of PM2.5across a broad range of concentrations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.|Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Volckens
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Quinn
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.|Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Leith
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mehaffy
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Henry
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Miller-Lionberg
mesh_terms: D000336:Aerosols / Q000032:analysis*; D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D014465:Ultrasonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D000076251:Wearable Electronic Devices
chemical_list: D000336:Aerosols; D000393:Air Pollutants
keywords: PM2.5; air pollution; citizen science; exposure; low cost; sensor; wearable