Radioactive and non-radioactive aerosol permeability through two types of analytical filters

Abstract

AFA analytical filter is the most used one of Petryanov filters in health protection and radiometric and analytical measurements. Therefore, the properties of this filter like efficiency and the permeability of the non-radioactive and radioactive aerosol particles are more important for accurate estimation and protection. AFA Petryanov filters (RSP-20 and RMP-20) are the most popular filters in Russia. In this work, an experimental setup has been constructed to estimate the permeability of the non-radioactive and radioactive aerosol particles through these two type of analytical filters. A standard radon chamber (2 m3), at Ural federal university is used to create radioactive aerosol. Non-radioactive aerosol or ambient aerosol is considered from ambient indoor air. Aerosol diffusion spectrometer (ADS) is used to measure aerosols concentration and number size distribution with range from 1 nm to 10 μm. The activity size distribution is determined with screen diffusion battery and the AIP-2 cascade impactor with range (0.5-20μm). The measurements are repeated before and after filters to study the PFs filters dispersion and permeability for non-radioactive and radioactive aerosols. ADS filter is used to measure the aerosol concentration and number size distribution before and after filters in ambient air with spatial construction. The effect of size modes of the non-radioactive and radioactive aerosols penetrating the filters is studied. At low aerosol concentration, the filters catch all free unattached radon decay products (RDPs) (1-5 nm) and the most collected activity with active median thermodynamic diameter, AMTD, ∼ 20 nm. In the radon chamber at high aerosol concentration, the activity of RDPs free unattached fraction nearly removed. The collected activity with AMTD ∼ 20-40 nm is more significant. © 2019 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.