1. Development of a personal dust monitor with a piezoelectric quartz crystal sensor
- Author
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D Reilly, L W Wilson, M J Hepher, and Julian D. C. Jones
- Subjects
Materials science ,business.industry ,Applied Mathematics ,Acoustics ,Compressed air ,Electrical engineering ,Sampling (statistics) ,Piezoelectricity ,Aerosol ,Volumetric flow rate ,Crystal ,business ,Instrumentation ,Engineering (miscellaneous) ,Sensitivity (electronics) ,Voltage - Abstract
A monitoring system using the collection technique of electrostatic precipitation on to a piezoelectric sensing element is examined. The transduction mechanism is the change in the resonant frequency of the sensing element from its unloaded nominal value of 9 MHz caused by the collected dust. The monitor had the three main design areas (point-to-plane distance, precipitator voltage and electrode-to-dust-inlet distance) optimized at a flow rate of approximately . This led to collection efficiencies greater than 97% with crystal mass sensitivity constants in the range for the aerosol Arizona Road Dust. The total sampling time is limited by overloading of the sensing element by dust. A method of extending the sampling time by using compressed air to clean the sensing element is described.
- Published
- 1997
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