ChAMBRe: a new atmospheric simulation chamber for aerosol modelling and bio-aerosol research
2018
Abstract. Atmospheric simulation chambers are exploratory platforms used to study
various atmospheric processes at realistic but controlled conditions. We
describe here a new facility specifically designed for the research on
atmospheric bio-aerosol as well as the protocols to produce, inject, expose
and collect bio-aerosols. ChAMBRe (Chamber for Aerosol
Modelling and Bio-aerosol Research) is
installed at the Physics Department of the University of Genoa, Italy, and it
is a node of the EUROCHAMP-2020 consortium. The chamber is made of stainless
steel with a total volume of about 2.2 m 3 . The lifetime of aerosol
particle with dimension from a few hundreds of nanometres to a few microns
varies from about 2 to 10 h. Characteristic parts of the facility are the
equipment and the procedures to grow, inject, and extract bacterial strains
in the chamber volume while preserving their viability. Bacteria are part of
the atmospheric ecosystem and have impact on several levels as: health
related issues, cloud formation, and geochemistry. ChAMBRe will host
experiments to study the bacterial viability vs. the air quality level, i.e.
the atmospheric concentration of gaseous and aerosol pollutants. In this
article, we report the results of the characterization tests as well as of
the first experiments performed on two bacterial strains belonging to the
Gram-positive and Gram-negative groups. A reproducibility at the 10 %
level has been obtained in repeated injections and collection runs with a
clean atmosphere, assessing this way the chamber sensitivity for systematic
studies on bacterial viability vs. environmental
conditions.
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