A new passive sampler for collecting atmospheric tritiated water vapor

Publication date: April 2017
Source:Atmospheric Environment, Volume 154
Author(s): Bin Feng, Bo Chen, Weihai Zhuo, Weiyuan Zhang
A new passive sampler was developed for collecting environmental tritiated water vapor. The construction of the sampler was improved according to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in which the influence on vapor collection by the turbulence inside the sampler was considered. Through changes in temperature from 5 °C to 35 °C and relative humidity from 45% to 90%, the new sampler revealed stable performance of the sampling rate. Compared with the previous samplers, the new sampler significantly lowered the effect of wind speed. Using the adsorption kinetic curve of the sampler provided in the co-comparison experiments, the quantitative relationship between the mass of adsorbed water and the cumulative absolute humidity exposure was established. Field applications in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant show that the data obtained by the new samplers is consistent with the active measurement. The sampler was preliminarily proven to be reliable and flexible for field investigation of HTO in the atmosphere.



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