Patent ID: 8539840

Claim:
An apparatus for collecting aerosol particles from a gas stream, said apparatus comprising a) a collector channel comprising an intake, an outlet, and a centrifugal particle trap fluidly connected between said intake and said outlet, wherein said centrifugal particle trap is a curved segment of said collector channel, said curved segment curving in the range of 120 to 360 degrees of arc and having a characteristic dimension defined as a minimum dimension of height or internal diameter in the range of 100 to 1500 micrometers, a maximal bending radius of in the range of between 0.5 to 3.0 times the characteristic dimension, and a trap volume defined by a concavedly curved wall of said channel on a first side of said volume, a convexedly curved wall of said channel on an opposite side of said volume, and lateral side walls, such that the height and width of said curved segment is essentially constant therethrough; b) a means for starting and stopping the flow of the gas stream through said particle trap; c) a means for injecting a first liquid into said particle trap; wherein said apparatus is configured to have: i) a first operating state defined by starting said gas stream flowing into said intake and out said outlet, said gas stream flowing at a subsonic velocity and having streamlines, wherein said streamlines bend in said curved segment so that particles cross the streamlines according to their inertia and come to rest on an impactor surface of said concavedly curved wall, thereby exhausting said gas stream from said outlet as a particle-depleted exhaust and trapping impacted particles in said particle trap as a trapped particle sample; and, ii) a second operating state defined by stopping said gas stream and injecting said first liquid as a discrete liquid volume into said particle trap, wherein said discrete liquid volume is constrained by said walls and contactingly microelutes the trapped particle sample from said impactor surface as a liquid particle concentrate.