AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Resonances in Laser Desorption/Ionization of Particle-Bound Metals Feature Remote Sensing of Ship Emissions
Johannes Passig, Julian Schade, Thomas Kröger-Badge, Robert Irsig, Hendryk Czech, Martin Sklorz, Lei Li, Xue Li, Zhen Zhou, Benjamin Stengel, Bert Buchholz, Thorsten Streibel, RALF ZIMMERMANN, Helmholtz Zentrum München and University of Rostock
Abstract Number: 418 Working Group: Control and Mitigation Technology
Abstract Ship emissions are important contributors to global air pollution with strong climate and health effects. Large amounts of particle-bound organics, sulfur and metals are emitted, especially under operation with low-grade bunker fuels. The particles metal composition is source-specific for ships running on these fuels and can be evaluated via single-particle mass spectrometry (SPMS). However, ambiguity in source apportionment increases with long-range transport because of interferences and only weak signals from some of the marker metals.
We present a so-far unrecognized enhancement effect in laser desorption/ionization (LDI). It leads to substantially increased ion yields for particle-bound metals in single-particle mass spectrometry (SPMS). As in conventional SPMS, the technique allows on-line characterization and classification of individual airborne particles.
The increased sensitivity for metals considerably improves the detection and evaluation of ship emissions in ambient air. We demonstrate detection of residual metals in ship emissions, even many hours after switching the engine from bunker fuel to diesel operation. Based on the ionization enhancement, we detected ship plumes from >100 km distance and attributed them to individual ship passages using freely available data from air trajectories and automatic identification system of the ships. In conjunction with the evaluation of sulfur emissions, violations against sulfur limits in emission control areas are now detectable from a large distance.