Progress 05/01/05 to 12/31/06
Outputs
Several conclusions can be made from the work accomplished in this Phase 1 effort. The coated units collected between 20 and 80% of the virus using a dissolvable filter as a reference. The units were successfully re-used multiple times with a hot water rinse between uses. With both uncoated and coated collectors, a significant percentage of the virus was captured by the device, with most of it recovered during the collection portion indicating that additional rinsing and use of different pH is not necessary. This is important because use of a single rinse fluid instead of 2 at different pH allows a simpler design for the overall collector. Some of the coated units appeared to have better performance than the uncoated units. Since the percentage of particles recovered in the rinse compared to the collection phase for the coated and uncoated units was similar, the affect of the coating may be a physical property such as the roughness rather than an electrostatic
enhancement of the capture intended to be provided by the coatings. This may be because the particles flow through the system quickly and the electrostatic effects from the coatings may be insignificant compared to the inertial forces. It is unclear whether alternative coatings or modification of the device geometry would provide further enhancement of the virus collection. It appears that for the nebulization process we used, most of the virus was associated with particles smaller than 4.84 microns. Approximately 30 to 50% of the plaque forming units were associated with particles smaller than 0.75 microns.
Impacts
Project demonstrated ability to collect airborne viruses. This technology has application to monitoring for bio warfare agents as well as agriculture including crop viruses. This is an important component of a viral sensor system.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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