Aerosol Research: Test Equipment & Facilities

Enabling Advanced Aerosol Research, Test & Evaluation

  • Are you conducting an aerosol research study?
  • Do you have a customer who requires a range of operational tests before accepting your solution?
  • Do you need certification of performance and safety to national or international standards?
  • Do you need to verify performance parameters before expanding capabilities?

Amtech has extensive experience in aerosol research, including the design and application of operational tests for components, systems, and concepts of operation, to military and industrial standards.  Contact us to discuss your requirements, and we will design an effective program to demonstrate and prove compliance.

Instruments, Equipment, and Facilities

Aerosol Test Chambers and Ancillary Equipment

Amtech has developed a range of aerosol chambers and instrumentation for aerosol research and to evaluate, refine, and validate performance of equipment under test – for both laboratory and field conditions. We offer a range of standard configurations, but have also supplied custom configurations for unique requirements, available in sizes from 1m3 to 100m3, with capabilities for disseminating both liquid and gas aerosols. These aerosol chambers have included stand-alone trailer configurations with airlock and walk-in capability, stand-off chambers with air curtains, small glovebox sized chambers, and specialized vapour chambers – contact us for more information on these custom chambers.

12 m3 Fixed Location Chamber – ATC-12:  

Capable of static and dynamic cloud generation, this chamber is used to replicate real-world simulation exercises for systems under test, and for development and refinement of collection and detection systems.  Featuring referee and control systems and software, this large-volume chamber also has airlock and walk-in capability for specialized trial applications.

1 m3 Portable Chamber – CATS (Compact Aerosol Test System):

This system is designed for characterizing aerosol detection and collection system in their operational environments.  CATS allows challenge aerosols to be combined with air sampled from the ambient environment, and is typically used for CBRN instrumentation testing, development of sampler, collector and detector technologies, regular validation of fielded equipment performance, and validating integrated biodetection systems on vehicles and other platforms.

We also supply a range of ancillary equipment for use with our chamber options, including:

  • Particle Diluter ADS-A20:  This system provides flexible and variable generation, dilution, and delivery of aerosols in the 1 to 10 micron range, and is designed for easy adaptation to aerosol research and test and evaluation equipment, for industrial, pharmaceutical and CBRN-related research and development, as well as Field and laboratory trials and test & evaluation calibration.

    Find out more about the ADS-A20.

  • Particle disseminators from manufacturers such as Sonotek, TSI, and Hudson. We will work with you to determine your aerosol dissemination requirements and recommend the appropriate dry and/or wet disseminator for the size range that you need.
  • The Slit Sampler is an active monitoring impaction aerosol sampler, utilizing standard 150mm agar plates. The slit sampler instrument has long been the standard benchmark for biological aerosol sampling and with over 20 years of experience in providing aerosol equipment for field, chamber and lab environments, we developed this slit sampler to improve on its capabilities over previous generation samplers.

Referee Systems

Some of the world’s foremost aerosol test and evaluation sites have selected our Referee System as the standard against which new innovations and technology are tested.  Sweden, Canada and the United States have these systems deployed for use in both summer and winter conditions. 

Referee systems are used to test Biological Point Detection Systems in an operational environment by collecting meteorological and aerosol data.  This data is then compared to the data the detection system under test has observed, and is used to determine the system’s detection effectiveness. 

To see a typical configuration of a Referee System Tower Deployment refer to this Referee-tower Documentation. We can customize the referee system with components specific to your requirements. Our control software allows for connectivity to a variety of biological or chemical detector devices to fully address your test & evaluation needs.