IONICON News & Views

We support young researchers at two GRCs in 2012

The Gordon Research Conferences provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies.

Two GRCs closely related to our own scientific research and PTR-MS are now supported by IONICON in order to give young researchers the opportunity to present their work to the scientific community.

These days the GRC for Plant Volatiles takes place in Ventura, CA, January 29 – February 3, 2012 and has as topics: Ecology, Biosynthesis, Regulation and Animal Perception of Floral and Vegetative Volatiles, Plus their Roles in Human Flavor and Agriculture.

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PTR-MS hilft dabei neue Erkenntnisse über die Schadstoffverteilung in der Atmosphäre zu gewinnen.

Armin Wisthaler und Tomas Mikoviny von der Universität Innsbruck sind das einzige ausländische Forscher-Team, das auf Einladung der NASA an 14 Messflügen mit ihrem PTR-MS Instrument teilgenommen hat.

Detaillierte Kenntnisse über die Verteilung und den Transport von Luftschadstoffen in der Atmosphäre können zuverlässig nur durch Messungen aus Luft gewonnen werden, weshalb die beiden Forscher im NASA Messflugzeug P-3B über dem Großraum Washington-Baltimore unterwegs waren. Mit ihrem Protonentausch-Reaktions Massenspektrometer (PTR-MS) wurden die Konzentration von verschiedenen Kohlenwasserstoffen ermittelt, die an der Bildung von Ozon und Feinstaub beteiligt sind. „Wir haben bereits vor drei Jahren mit dem PTR-MS an einer NASA-Kampagne sehr erfolgreich teilgenommen, weshalb man uns auch zu DISCOVER-AQ wieder eingeladen hat“, erzählt Wisthaler. „Da das Flugzeug etwa 100 Meter pro Sekunde zurücklegt, sind schnelle Messungen, wie sie das PTR-MS durchführen kann, unabdingbar“, ergänzt er. Während des Fluges wird über einen Einlass Luft eingesaugt und das PTR-MS ermittelt in Sekundenschnelle die Konzentration von Kohlenwasserstoffen.

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PTR-MS technology made in Austria contributes to important results of the CLOUD experiments at CERN.

The CLOUD experiment has been designed to study the effect of cosmic rays on the formation of atmospheric aerosols – tiny liquid or solid particles suspended in the atmosphere – under controlled laboratory conditions. Atmospheric aerosols are thought to be responsible for a large fraction of the seeds that form cloud droplets.

The CLOUD results show that trace vapors assumed until now to account for aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can explain only a tiny fraction of the observed atmospheric aerosol production. The results also show that ionization from cosmic rays significantly enhances aerosol formation. Precise measurements such as these are important in achieving a quantitative understanding of cloud formation, an important contribution to climate models.

The prestigious NATURE journal has now published first results from the CLOUD experiment, where two PTR-MS instruments from the Institute for Ion Physics and Applied Physics of the University of Innsbruck contributed to this cutting edge project. A quadrupole based PTR-MS was used to monitor trace concentrations of Ammonia and a PTR-TOF-MS system (based on time of flight technology) continuously scanned organic vapor concentrations in the CLOUD chamber.

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A new review article in Trends in Analytical Chemistry discusses direct-injection mass spectrometry for VOC analysis.

F. Biasioli, C. Yeretzian, T. D. Märk, J. Dewulf and H. Van Langenhove wrote an interesting review with the title “Direct-injection mass spectrometry adds the time dimension to (B)VOC analysis” that was recently published in Trends in Analytical Chemistry 30 (7) (2011).

We at IONICON are often asked what actually the differences and in our case, the benefits of the PTR-MS technology compared to other, similar methods are. Not only a technical comparison is of interest but also feedback from studies in the field covering various applications is in high demand by people contacting us.

For me the advantages of PTR-MS are obvious and I also know which position our technology and products have in the market, but of course it is more credible if an article in a peer-reviewed journal has such a comparison as topic and gives the reader a chance to follow a well grounded debate.
The synopsis of this article with regards to PTR-MS and my conclusion, I would summarize as follows only mentioning the most intriguing arguments:

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Detection of Plant Volatiles after Leaf Wounding and Darkening by Proton Transfer Reaction ‘‘Time-of-Flight’’ Mass Spectrometry (PTR-TOF)

A new study published yesterday, where IONICON PTR-TOFMS was used to detect biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) induced by leaf wounding and darkening, shows the huge potential of PTR-MS for monitoring and quantification of  fast processes in our environment. Leaf wounding reactions where BVOCs are emitted occur very fast and therefore a method is necessary that can capture the BVOC profiles in seconds. A very high time resolution and sensitivity in combination with the high mass resolving power of a time of flight makes the PTR-TOFMS technology an ideal tool for such applications. PTR-MS can detect most of the common VOCs in real-time, in very low concentrations and without complicated sample preparation as our online mass spectrometers directly inject the sample gas and provide results without delay.

The study is an outcome of the Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnership and Pathways (IAPP) project 218065 ‘‘PTR-TOF’’ funded by theEuropean Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 – People), where IONICON is one of the partners.

Get free access to this article:

F. Brilli, T. M. Ruuskanen, R. Schnitzhofer, M. Müller, M. Breitenlechner, V. Bittner, G. Wohlfahrt, F. Loreto, A. Hansel: Detection of Plant Volatiles after Leaf Wounding and Darkening by Proton Transfer Reaction ‘‘Time-of-Flight’’ Mass Spectrometry (PTR-TOF), PLoS ONE, 6(5) (2011), e20419.

Read the abstract:

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Joost de Gouw, a senior scientist at NOAA and his colleagues report from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its effects on the atmosphere

The dramatic events from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are still very present in our memories and now effects on the atmosphere have been investigated by a NOAA airborne campaign. On board the NOAA research aircraft was a modified IONICON PTR-MS instrument. A new article in SCIENCE by Joost de Gouw et al. presents the study and implications of the the oil spill to our atmosphere.

Joost de Gouw et al.: Organic Aerosol Formation Downwind from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Science 331, 1295 (2011).
Read the abstract

Joost de Gouw is a senior scientist from the  Atmospheric VOC Research Group of NOAA ESRL & CIRES and an expert in PTR-MS. He got his PhD from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands in 1994 and before submitting the article at SCIENCE he also published a well known review on PTR-MS.

Joost de Gouw et al.: Measurement of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Earth’s Atmosphere using Proton-Transfer-Reaction Mass Spectrometry. Mass Spectrometry Reviews, 26 (2007), 223-257.
Read the abstract

NCAR scientist Thomas Karl, Ph.D., and fellow researchers have an article accepted in renowned magazine SCIENCE

Thomas Karl who got his Ph.D. at the University of Innsbruck in 2000 and then moved to the USA to work for National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), uses PTR-MS for his research in atmospheric chemistry and related fields.

He and his colleagues were now able to have an article featured in the SCIENCE magazine and we are glad to congratulate Thomas for this achievement!

The scientists performed ecosystem-scale flux measurements and were able to show that the removal of oxygenated VOC via dry deposition is substantially larger than currently assumed for deciduous ecosystems.

Click here to read the abstract.