Aerosol inlet flow modulator
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
InventorsDaniel G. Wise, Lawrence J. Hyttinen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A flow modulator to control the flow of an aerosol to an aerosol detection and/or monitoring system and other aerosol flow systems includes a chamber having an inlet and an outlet, a diverging section of the chamber beneath the inlet that has a flow divider at the center to divide the aerosol into fractions, a recirculation section in which the divided aerosol fractions are recombined, and a converging section that channels the recombined aerosol fractions to the outlet of the chamber.
Claims11
A method for modulating an aerosol flow containing aerosol pulses or boluses, comprising:
- providing a chamber comprising an inlet at an upstream end, an outlet at a downstream end and an expansion cavity;
- providing a flow divider in said chamber to cause the aerosol flow to traverse a plurality of pathways into the expansion cavity;
- channeling the aerosol flow to the inlet;
- dividing the aerosol flow into fractions in the chamber;
- recirculating the fractions in the expansion cavity to effect a plurality of dwell times for the fractions;
- and
- recombining the fractions with fractions from preceding boluses or pulses before the aerosol flow exits from the chamber outlet.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.