Autonomous pathogen detection system 2001

High air flow, low pressure drop, bio-aerosol collector using a multi-slit virtual impactor

“…The collector described in this report has been repackaged into a smaller size and incorporated into autonomous pathogen detection systems (Langlois et al, 2000;McBride et al, 2003). These detection systems are large units, about the size of an automated teller machine and are not portable.…”

“…It takes 2-3 collection cycles of clean sample to purge the residual particles from the RI collector. McBride et al (2003) and Langlois et al (2000) have observed these residual particles in their measurements and the subsequent purging with clean samples. The loss from additional components of the collector such as aerosol pre-treatment devices are also included in the loss term.…”

“…A rain cap is also added to the inlet of the virtual impactor to prevent rain and large objects (but not large particles) from being pulled into the collector. The improved collector has been evaluated in field tests (Langlois et al, 2000;McBride et al, 2003) and a number of units have been built and deployed in limited applications for monitoring for bio-agents. When the PM10 inlet for removing particles larger than 10 m is added in the future, the portable collector will have all of the major design concepts from the XM2 shown in Fig.…”

Autonomous Detection of Aerosolized Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis

“…We have developed, built, and tested the autonomous pathogen detection system (APDS), a stand-alone instrument capable of continuous, fully autonomous monitoring for multiple airborne biological threat agents . The APDS is intended for use in domestic applications (e.g., office complexes, transportation terminals, convention centers) where the public is at high risk of exposure to covert releases of bioagents and as part of an integrated network of biosensors for wide-area monitoring of urban areas and major gatherings (e.g., inaugurations, Olympics).…”

“…[15][16][17][18] We have developed, built, and tested the autonomous pathogen detection system (APDS), a stand-alone instrument capable of continuous, fully autonomous monitoring for multiple airborne biological threat agents. 19 The APDS is intended for use in domestic applications (e.g., office complexes, transportation terminals, convention centers) where the public is at high risk of exposure to covert releases of bioagents and as part of an integrated network of biosensors for wide-area monitoring of urban areas and major gatherings (e.g., inaugurations, Olympics). Multiplexed antibodybased tests (immunoassays) allow the detector to respond to broad classes of bioagents, including those without nucleic acids such as protein toxins, and are used to reduce reagent costs, making long-term monitoring operations possible.…”