A cost-effective differential mobility analyzer (cDMA) for multiple DMA column applications

In aerosol research and applications, a differential mobility analyzer (DMA) is now considered the standard tool for sizing and classifying monodisperse particles in the sub-micrometer and nanometer size ranges. However, DMA application at the pilot or industrial production scale remains infeasible because of the low mass throughput. A simple way to scale up DMA operation is to use multiple DMA columns. The manufacture and maintenance costs of existing DMAs, however, limit such a scale-up. A cost-effective DMA column (named cDMA) has thus been developed in this work to address the above issue. To reduce its manufacturing cost, the prototype was constructed using parts requiring little machining. The cDMA column was also designed for easy maintenance and easy variation of the classification length for any application-specified size range. In this study, prototypes with two particle classification lengths, 1.75 and 4.50 cm, were constructed and their performance was experimentally evaluated at sheath-to-aerosol flowrate ratios of 5:1, 10:1, and 15:1 via the tandem DMA (TDMA) technique. It was concluded that both prototype cDMAs, operated at a sheath/aerosol flowrate ratio less than 15:1 and with a polydisperse aerosol flowrate of 1.0 lpm, achieved sizing resolution comparable to that offered by Nano-DMA. The longer cDMA had comparable transmission efficiency to that of Nano-DMA, and the shorter cDMA exceeded the performance of Nano-DMA. Hence, the cDMA with the shorter (1.75 cm) classification length is better suited for the characterization of macromolecular samples.