Most filtration studies have been conducted with spherical particles; however, many aerosol particles are agglomerates of small primary spheres. Filtration efficiency tests were conducted with silver NP agglomerates, with the agglomerate structure controlled by altering the temperature of a sintering furnace. The mobility diameter and mass of the silver NP agglomerates were measured using a differential mobility analyzer together with an aerosol particle mass analyzer. From these measurements, it was found that the fractal-like dimension, D fm , varied from 2.07 to 2.95 as the sintering temperatures was increased from ambient to 600• C. The agglomerates were essentially fully coalesced at 600• C allowing direct comparison of the filtration behavior of the agglomerate to that of a sphere with the same mobility diameter. Other agglomerate properties measured include the primary diameter, the agglomerate length and aspect ratio, and the dynamic shape factor.Agglomerate filtration modeling with no adjustable parameters has been investigated in terms of diffusion, impaction, and interception. The model results agree qualitatively with the experimental results in the particle size range of 50 to 300 nm. The results indicated that the larger interception length of agglomerates is responsible for the smaller penetration through a fibrous filter in comparison to spherical particles with the same mobility diameters.

The dispersion in air of nanoparticles of different sizes, materials and morphologies with controlled agglomeration involving aerosol delivery for in vivo and in vitro studies is one of the most difficult challenges in the field of nanoparticle toxicology. We describe here a nanoparticle dispersion system using an electrospray method to deliver airborne nanoparticles (approximately 10-100 nm) with spatial uniformity and controllable particle concentration for in vitro and in vivo studies. With the dispersion method, single nanoparticles (polystyrene latex particles, TiO(2), Au, Mn, quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes) can be delivered to cells and animals via the air. The degree of agglomeration can be controlled by changing the suspension feeding rate to simulate realistic conditions for exposure studies.

Nanoparticle agglomerates are pervasive in atmospheric sciences, air pollution, and manufacturing of powdered materials, yet studies for filtration of nanoparticle agglomerates are still scarce compared to those for spherical particles. We investigated loading of soot nanoparticle agglomerates on fibrous air filter media. The soot agglomerates were generated from a diffusion burner with propane gas as fuel and compressed air as oxidant/sheath. The mode of the number distribution was determined to be 120 nm. A Differential Mobility Analyzer (DMA)-Aerosol Particle Mass Analyzer (APM) system was used to measure the mass of agglomerates as a function of the mobility size, which gave a mass-mobility exponent of 1.9 ± 0.1. Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we found that the primary particles in the agglomerates had a mean diameter of 28 nm with a geometric standard deviation of 1.26. Loading experiments were carried out with the face velocity of 10 cm/s on a fiberglass filter media. The pressure drop increased approximately linearly with the loading mass. The porosity of the cakes was calculated using cake mass and cake thickness, and the average cake porosity was 0.95. We found that the model of Endo et al. (1998) for cake loading was applicable to soot agglomerate loading. The cake could be regarded as formed by primary particles in soot agglomerates, and agglomerates are indistinguishable once deposited in the cake. When the size distribution of the primary particles was used in the model of Endo et al. good agreement between the experimental and computed results was obtained.