Secondary aerosol cells

When carrying out cell disruption operations it is often necessary to provide cooling of the cell concentrate due to the high pressures developed in the equipment. An additional consequence of high-pressure operation is that cell disruption equipment can generate aerosols which may be undesirable, particularly for biologically hazardous organisms. In these cases, the ability to steam sterilize the equipment is required, for decontamination, and some type of secondary containment may also be required, such as an isolator or a contained area within a facility to which access is controlled. 

Another unique approach is to produce a dry aerosol from a standard aqueous solution with a pneumatic nebulizer and desolvator. The aerosol produced by this apparatus is combined with the aerosol from the ablation cell using a dual gas-flow sample introduction system and a gas-mixing cell. By varying the concentration of the analyte in the standard aqueous solution, calibration curves can be created by this procedure. The composition of the standard solution can be adjusted to match the matrix composition of the bulk material of the solid sample, thereby simulating the behavior of the ablated solid in the plasma. Secondary standards can be created by this technique from selected samples. Future calibration curves can be prepared from ablating these secondary standards. 

---