Technology
In commercial PTR-MS instruments water vapour is ionized in a hollow cathode discharge:
- .
After the discharge a short drift tube is used to form very pure (>99.5%) H3O+ via ion-molecule reactions:
- .
Due to the high purity of the primary ions a mass filter between the ion source and the reaction drift tube is not necessary and the H3O+ ions can be injected directly. The absence of this mass filter in turn greatly reduces losses of primary ions and leads eventually to an outstandingly low detection limit of the whole instrument. In the reaction drift tube a vacuum pump is continuously drawing through air containing the VOCs one wants to analyze. At the end of the drift tube the protonated molecules are mass analyzed (Quadrupole mass analyzer or Time-of-flight mass spectrometer) and detected.
Read more about this topic: Proton-transfer-reaction Mass Spectrometry
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)