A Collector for Fog Water and Interstitial Aerosol

Abstract

Abstract An active heatable cloud water collector for ground sampling is presented. The collector can be operated unattended for approximately one week, even in harsh winter conditions. The collection strands are Teflon tubes. A preset cycle of 15-min sampling followed by 250 s of mild heating using wires inserted into the tubes is used. The lower cutoff diameter for fog droplets is 7.3 μm, and its overall collection efficiency is 79% for the liquid water content of fogs at the experimental site in central Europe. It performed reliably during a 2-yr experiment. The collected fog water interacts exclusively with inert materials such as Teflon and Perspex so the collector is well suited for trace analyses of fog water. The collector can be upgraded with an interstitial aerosol collection unit, at the expense of unattended operation. The lower cutoff diameter of the fog water collection strands is 8.1 μm when the interstitial aerosol module is installed. The module efficiently collects particles with diameters <3.5 μm. For these particles, size-segregated samples in four size classes at diameters down to 0.06 μm are collected with a Berner-type impactor. The collector was successfully employed in a mountainous region of central Europe. Over 400 samples were collected within 2 yr. With the collection unit for interstitial aerosol added, 31 samples were collected in a 2-month period.