The new external beam facility for environmental studies at the Tandetron accelerator of LABEC

At the new 3 MV Tandetron accelerator of the LABEC laboratory of INFN in Florence, an external beam facility fully dedicated to measurements of elemental composition of atmospheric aerosol has been installed. The experimental set-up hitherto used for this kind of applications has been upgraded with the introduction of a silicon drift detector and of a beam current monitor system based on the back-scattering of protons on the extraction window. The new facility will be presented, together with some methodological results obtained so far for the analysis of airborne particulate matter samples collected on quartz fiber filters. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.