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Electrospray Collection of Airborne Contaminants

Award Information
Agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Branch: N/A
Contract: NNC08CA08C
Agency Tracking Number: 066100
Amount: $596,941.00
Phase: Phase II
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: X3.01
Solicitation Number: N/A
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2006
Award Year: 2008
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2007-12-07
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2009-12-06
Small Business Information
696 Amity Road
Bethany, CT 06524-3006
United States
DUNS: 783630189
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Joseph Bango
 Principal Investigator
 (203) 393-9666
 jbango@ctanalytical.com
Business Contact
 Joseph Bango
Title: Business Official
Phone: (203) 393-9666
Email: jbango@ctanalytical.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

In stark contrast to current stagnation-based methods for capturing airborne particulates and biological aerosols, our demonstrated, cost-effective electrospray technology employs an entirely different approach based on the remarkable effectiveness of small, highly charged liquid droplets formed from an electrospray source to "getter" both particles and polar molecules dispersed in a gas. Less capable and expensive collection system technologies are generally based on stagnation of high velocity ambient airflow on a collecting surface. The momentum of particles and heavy molecules precludes their following gas streamlines during this stagnation. Instead, they concentrate and are trapped on the detector's surface if the surface is "sticky," or concentrated in the surface boundary layer, which can be separated from the mainstream flow and collected. Typically, current separation methodology collects about 50 percent of the particles between 1.0 and 10 microns in diameter from a flow of 500 L/min with a power consumption of up to 500 watts; i.e., about 1 watt of power is required for a small fan to compress 1 liter of air per minute to produce the high velocity airflow necessary for effective trapping of small bio-particles and heavy molecules. However, our electrospray technology consumes negligible power and achieves virtually 100 percent particle collection. In fact, we have demonstrated that the power efficiency of electrospray gettering for a single electrospray emitter to collect 100 percent of the particles, often without a fan, at 10,000 times greater than the power efficiency of state of the art systems.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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