Chem-Bio Self-Decontaminating Surfaces (Briefing Slides). AFRL Quarterly Summary on DARPA Effort
Abstract
A slide show describing progress to 5 Dec 2007 toward reproducibly contaminating sensitive equipment items and measuring the efficacy of different surface treatments as countermeasures to bioaerosol contamination. A small contamination chamber was fabricated and shown to achieve good reproducibility delivering Bacillus atrophaeus spores (13.6% coefficient of variation). Successful delivery (CV = 7.2%) of Staphylococcus aureus at 10e4/sq cm was also achieved in the small-scale chamber by aerosolization in a medium containing 1% raffinose. Batch contamination of larger items (hand-held electronic devices) was achieved by placing them inside a bioaerosol test chamber that is regularly used to deliver aerosols for filter challenge studies and arresting airflow overnight after steady-state bioaerosol concentrations were established. Loadings larger than 10e4/sq cm were again achieved. A direct extraction procedure with mechanical agitation was used to recover B. atrophaeus spores from glass slides used as controls, and two methods, HEPA vacuum and rayon gauze wipes were used to recover spores from treated and untreated calculators. HEPA recovery was both less convenient and less efficient but CVs for both methods were less than 4%.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 05, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA480482
Entities
People
- Brian K. Heimbuch
- Joseph D. Wander
- Kimberly R. O'gurek
Organizations
- Applied Research Associates (United States)