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Göran Frank

Director of graduate studies

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Continuous stand-alone controllable aerosol/cloud droplet dryer for atmospheric sampling

Author

  • Staffan Sjögren
  • Göran Frank
  • Maria Berghof
  • Bengt Martinsson

Summary, in English

We describe a general-purpose dryer designed for continuous sampling of atmospheric aerosol, where a specified relative humidity (RH) of the sample flow (lower than the atmospheric humidity) is required. It is often prescribed to measure the properties of dried aerosol, for instance for monitoring networks. The specific purpose of our dryer is to dry cloud droplets (maximum diameter approximately 25 mu m, highly charged, up to 5x10(2) charges). One criterion is to minimise losses from the droplet size distribution entering the dryer as well as on the residual dry particle size distribution exiting the dryer. This is achieved by using a straight vertical downwards path from the aerosol inlet mounted above the dryer, and removing humidity to a dry, closed loop airflow on the other side of a semi-permeable GORE-TEX membrane (total area 0.134m(2)). The water vapour transfer coefficient, k, was measured to be 4.6x10(-7) kgm(-2) s(-1) % RH-1 in the laboratory (temperature 294 K) and is used for design purposes. A net water vapour transfer rate of up to 1.2x10(-6) kg s-1 was achieved in the field. This corresponds to drying a 5.7 L min(-1) (0.35m(3) h(-1)) aerosol sample flow from 100% RH to 27% RH at 293K (with a drying air total flow of 8.7 L min-1). The system was used outdoors from 9 May until 20 October 2010, on the mountain Brocken (51.80 degrees N, 10.67 degrees E, 1142ma.s.l.) in the Harz region in central Germany. Sample air relative humidity of less than 30% was obtained 72% of the time period. The total availability of the measurement system was > 94% during these five months.

Department/s

  • Nuclear physics
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

349-357

Publication/Series

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques

Volume

6

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Copernicus GmbH

Topic

  • Subatomic Physics

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1867-1381