Ambient aerosol sampling without pumps

The proposed simple approach of a passive sampling system uses the well-known fact, that even large particles of 30 um can be transported by natural convection into a shielded chamber. In order to overcome the particle size selective deposition in this chamber , a pulsed corona discharge deposits all particles from the chamber volume onto a collection plate. Therefore, the airborne concentration can be inferred from the mass collected and the sampled volume, which is given by the chamber volume times the number of corona discharges, provided that deposition during corona pauses is taken into account properly.