scholarly journals Observations and Modeling of the Green Ocean Amazon 2014/15: Hydroxyl Radical (OH) Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) Field Campaign Report

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saewung Kim ◽  
◽  
◽  
◽  
◽  
...  
2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (22) ◽  
pp. 6823-6838 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Zheng ◽  
R. Zhang ◽  
E. C. Fortner ◽  
R. M. Volkamer ◽  
L. Molina ◽  
...  

Abstract. An ion drift-chemical ionization mass spectrometer (ID-CIMS) was deployed in Mexico City between 7 and 31 March to measure gas-phase nitric acid (HNO3) and dinitrogen pentoxide (N2O5 during the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA)-2006 field campaign. The observation site was located at the Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo in the northern part of Mexico City urban area with major emissions of pollutants from residential, vehicular and industrial sources. Diurnally, HNO3 was less than 200 parts per trillion (ppt) during the night and early morning. The concentration of HNO3 increased steadily from around 09:00 a.m. central standard time (CST), reached a peak value of 0.5 to 3 parts per billion (ppb) in the early afternoon, and then declined sharply to less than half of the peak value near 05:00 p.m. CST. An inter-comparison between the ID-CIMS and an ion chromatograph/mass spectrometer (ICMS) showed a good agreement between the two HNO3 measurements (R2=0.75). The HNO3 mixing ratio was found to anti-correlate with submicron-sized aerosol nitrate, suggesting that the gas-particle partitioning process was a major factor in determining the gaseous HNO3 concentration. Losses by irreversible reactions with mineral dust and via dry deposition also could be important at this site. Most of the times during the MCMA 2006 field campaign, N2O5 was found to be below the detection limit (about 30 ppt for a 10 s integration time) of the ID-CIMS, because of high NO mixing ratio at the surface (>100 ppb) during the night. An exception occurred on 26 March 2006, when about 40 ppt N2O5 was observed during the late afternoon and early evening hours under cloudy conditions before the build-up of NO at the surface site. The results revealed that during the MCMA-2006 field campaign HNO3 was primarily produced from the reaction of OH with NO2 and regulated by gas/particle transfer and dry deposition. The production of HNO3 from N2O5 hydrolysis during the nighttime was small because of high NO and low O3 concentrations near the surface.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiao Li ◽  
Yuyang Li ◽  
Michael Lawler ◽  
Jiming Hao ◽  
James Smith ◽  
...  

<p>Ultrafine particles (UFPs) dominate the particle number population in the urban atmosphere and revealing their chemical composition is important. The thermal desorption chemical ionization mass spectrometer (TDCIMS) can semi-continuously measure UFP composition at the molecular level. We modified a TDCIMS and deployed it in urban Beijing. Radioactive materials in the TDCIMS for aerosol charging and chemical ionization were replaced by soft X-ray ionizers so that it can be operated in countries with tight regulations on radioactive materials. Protonated N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone ions were used as the positive reagent ion, which selectively detects ammonia and low-molecular weight-aliphatic amines and amides vaporized from the particle phase. With superoxide as the negative reagent ion, a wide range of inorganic and organic compounds were observed, including nitrate, sulfate, aliphatic acids with carbon numbers up to 18, and highly oxygenated CHO, CHON, and CHOS compounds. The latter two can be attributed to parent ions or the decomposition products of organonitrates and organosulfates/organosulfonates, respectively. Components from both primary emissions and secondary formation of UFPs were identified. Compared to the UFPs measured at forest and marine sites, those in urban Beijing contain more nitrogen-containing and sulfur-containing compounds. These observations illustrate unique features of the UFPs in this polluted urban environment and provide insights into their origins.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 1861-1870 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Zaytsev ◽  
Martin Breitenlechner ◽  
Abigail R. Koss ◽  
Christopher Y. Lim ◽  
James C. Rowe ◽  
...  

Abstract. Chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS) instruments routinely detect hundreds of oxidized organic compounds in the atmosphere. A major limitation of these instruments is the uncertainty in their sensitivity to many of the detected ions. We describe the development of a new high-resolution time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometer that operates in one of two ionization modes: using either ammonium ion ligand-switching reactions such as for NH4+ CIMS or proton transfer reactions such as for proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS). Switching between the modes can be done within 2 min. The NH4+ CIMS mode of the new instrument has sensitivities of up to 67 000 dcps ppbv−1 (duty-cycle-corrected ion counts per second per part per billion by volume) and detection limits between 1 and 60 pptv at 2σ for a 1 s integration time for numerous oxygenated volatile organic compounds. We present a mass spectrometric voltage scanning procedure based on collision-induced dissociation that allows us to determine the stability of ammonium-organic ions detected by the NH4+ CIMS instrument. Using this procedure, we can effectively constrain the sensitivity of the ammonia chemical ionization mass spectrometer to a wide range of detected oxidized volatile organic compounds for which no calibration standards exist. We demonstrate the application of this procedure by quantifying the composition of secondary organic aerosols in a series of laboratory experiments.


1975 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 734-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Saferstein ◽  
Jew-Ming Chao ◽  
John J Manura

Abstract The detection of explosive residues in debris is difficult because of the thermal instability of many explosives along with the high sensitivity requirements of the analyses. The isobutane chemical ionization (CI) mass spectra of common civilian and military explosives were obtained under different instrumental parameters. The intent of the study was to determine the feasibility of applying CI to residue detection. The CI spectra of the explosives 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazocydohexane, 1,3,5,7-tetraazocyclooctane, and pentaerythritol tetranitrate were shown to be particularly sensitive to the conditions of source temperature and reagent gas pressure. These parameters were adjusted to yield the least complex CI spectra for the explosives studied. The simplicity of the CI spectra obtained makes it a feasible technique for detecting explosive residues in the presence of extraneous materials found in the acetone extracts of debris material. Placement of the extract into the direct probe of the CI mass spectrometer eliminates the need for prior chromatographic treatment of the extract and would optimize the high sensitivity of the CI technique.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 1104-1113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuyuki Kita ◽  
Yu Morino ◽  
Yutaka Kondo ◽  
Yuichi Komazaki ◽  
Nobuyuki Takegawa ◽  
...  

Abstract A chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) instrument has been developed for high-precision measurements of gaseous nitric acid (HNO3) specifically under high- and variable-humidity conditions in the boundary layer. The instrument’s background signals (i.e., signals detected when HNO3-free air is measured), which depend on the humidity and HNO3 concentration of the sample air, are the most important factor affecting the limit of detection (LOD). A new system to provide HNO3-free air without changing both the humidity and the pressure of the sampled air was developed to measure the background level accurately. The detection limit was about 23 parts per trillion by volume (pptv) for 50-s averages. Field tests, including an intercomparison with the diffusion scrubber technique, were carried out at a surface site in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2003 and June 2004. A comparison between the measured concentrations of HNO3 and particulate nitrate indicated that the interference from particulate nitrate was not detectable (i.e., less than about 1%). The intercomparison indicated that the two independent measurements of HNO3 agreed to within the combined uncertainties of these measurements. This result demonstrates that the CIMS instrument developed in this study is capable of measuring HNO3 mixing ratios with the precision, accuracy, and time resolution required for atmospheric science.


2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (20) ◽  
pp. 5317-5327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin D. Edwards ◽  
Christopher A. Cantrell ◽  
Sherry Stephens ◽  
Brian Hill ◽  
Olusegun Goyea ◽  
...  

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 959-971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuto MACHII ◽  
Osamu KUMAZAKI ◽  
Kenji MIZUNO ◽  
Mitsugu NAGANO ◽  
Yoshio HAYASAKA ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document