Articles | Volume 14, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-4507-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-4507-2021
Research article
 | 
18 Jun 2021
Research article |  | 18 Jun 2021

Efficacy of a portable, moderate-resolution, fast-scanning differential mobility analyzer for ambient aerosol size distribution measurements

Stavros Amanatidis, Yuanlong Huang, Buddhi Pushpawela, Benjamin C. Schulze, Christopher M. Kenseth, Ryan X. Ward, John H. Seinfeld, Susanne V. Hering, and Richard C. Flagan

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Cited articles

Amanatidis, S., Kim, C., Spielman, S. R., Lewis, G. S., Hering, S. V., and Flagan, R. C.: The Spider DMA: A miniature radial differential mobility analyzer, Aerosol Sci. Tech., 54, 75–189, https://doi.org/10.1080/02786826.2019.1626974, 2020. a, b, c, d, e
Amanatidis, S., Huang, Y., Pushpawela, B., Schulze, B. C., Kenseth, C. M., Ward, R. X., Seinfeld, J. H., Hering, S. V., and Flagan, R. C.: Efficacy of a portable, moderate-resolution, fast-scanning DMA for ambient aerosol size distribution measurements (Version 1.0), CaltechDATA, https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.1896, 2021a. a, b
Amanatidis, S., Huang, Y., Pushpawela, B., Schulze, B. C., Kenseth, C. M., Ward, R. X., Seinfeld, J. H., Hering, S. V., and Flagan, R. C.: Size distribution measurement datasets of the “Spider DMA” and “LDMA” particle sizers, collected in Pasadena, CA between 16 May–11 June 2020. (Version 1.0), CaltechDATA [data set], https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.1998, 2021b. a
Boggs, P. T., Byrd, R. H., and Schnabel, R. B.: A Stable and Efficient Algorithm for Nonlinear Orthogonal Distance Regression, SIAM J. Sci. Stat. Comp., 8, 1052–1078, https://doi.org/10.1137/0908085, 1987. a
Cleveland, W. S.: Robust Locally Weighted Regression and Smoothing Scatterplots, J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 74, 829–836, https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1979.10481038, 1979. a
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Short summary
We assess the performance of a highly portable mobility analyzer, the Spider DMA, in measuring ambient aerosol particle size distributions, with specific attention to its moderate sizing resolution (R=3). Long-term field testing showed excellent correlation with a conventional mobility analyzer (R=10) over the 17–500 nm range, suggesting that moderate resolution may be sufficient to obtain key properties of ambient size distributions, enabling smaller instruments and better counting statistics.
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