Measurement of sub-4 nm particle emission from FFF-3D printing with the TSI Nano Enhancer and the Airmodus Particle Size Magnifier

Abstract

The emission of ultrafine particles from small desktop Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printers has been frequently investigated in the past years. However, the vast majority of FFF emission and exposure studies have not considered the possible occurrence of particles below the typical detection limit of Condensation Particle Counters and could have systematically underestimated the total particle emission as well as the related exposure risks. Therefore, we comparatively measured particle number concentrations and size distributions of sub-4 nm particles with two commercially available diethylene glycol-based instruments – the TSI 3757 Nano Enhancer and the Airmodus A10 Particle Size Magnifier. Both instruments were evaluated for their suitability of measuring FFF-3D printing emissions in the sub-4 nm size range while operated as a particle counter or as a particle size spectrometer. For particle counting, both instruments match best when the Airmodus system was adjusted to a cut-off of 1.5 nm. For size spectroscopy, both instruments show limitations due to either the fast dynamics or rather low levels of particle emissions from FFF-3D printing in this range. The effects are discussed in detail in this article. The findings could be used to implement sub-4 nm particle measurement in future emission or exposure studies, but also for the development of standard test protocols for FFF-3D printing emissions.

Graphical Abstract

EDITOR:

• Pramod Kulkarni

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Prof. Dr. Andreas Held (Technical University of Berlin), Dr. Joonas Vanhanen (Airmodus Ltd.) and Dr. Torsten Tritscher (TSI GmbH) for a review of the manuscript prior to submission to the journal. The authors thank Dr. Joonas Vanhanen and Dr. Torsten Tritscher for valuable support in setting up the instruments, data evaluation and for fruitful discussions. The authors would also like to thank Minghao Wang for his support with the measurements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the German Environment Agency (UBA) under the grant FKZ 3721 62 2010.