AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Identification of Organic Components in Aerosols Sampled with Electrostatic Precipitation-Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry (EP-ESI-MS)
JUMAANAH FLOWERS, Elizabeth Grubb, Lisa Au, Siqin He, Lin Li, Hongxu Duan, Amir Naqwi, Christopher Hogan Jr., Deborah Gross, Carleton College
Abstract Number: 668 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Electrospray ionization (ESI) coupled with tandem mass spectrometry enables the detailed exploration of the structure of organic compounds, due to its ability to generate intact pseudo-molecular ions which are then isolated and fragmented. The use of ESI and tandem mass spectrometry to investigate the organic components of aerosol particles will be described here. The aerosol particles will be sampled using an Electrostatic Precipitation-Electrospray Ionization (EP-ESI) source that we have recently described. This source uses a charged tungsten rod to electrostatically sample charged aerosols for a fixed period of time before exposing the sampled particles to a flowing electrospray solvent. By application of an appropriate voltage, an electrospray is generated in which dissolved molecular species from the collected aerosols are introduced into the gas-phase, and sampled into the mass spectrometer. In combination with an ion trap mass spectrometer that enables multiple stages of isolation/fragmentation, this source provides a powerful tool to sample and identify complex organic compounds found within aerosol particles, whether generated from laboratory experiments or sampled from the ambient air. To demonstrate the capabilities of this system, we will investigate its performance when coupled to a commercial mass spectrometer using laboratory generated aerosols of a variety of organic precursors and their oxidation products.