MRI: Development of a Field-deployable Low-pressure Gas Chromatograph with Chemical Ionization Detection

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Many of the more oxidized compounds found in the atmosphere, in gas and aerosol phases, represent a challenge for chemists to identify and measure due to their high reactivity, and propensity to breakdown or combine with other chemical species and surfaces. They may have the same molecular mass and formula. CalTech atmospheric chemists will adapt a gas chromatography mass spectrometer (GC/MS) with a highly sensitive detection scheme for multifunctional organic compounds using a chemical-ionization clustering method developed at Caltech. The project builds off an existing testbed where researchers have demonstrated high transmission of otherwise labile (fragile) organic peroxides, hydroxynitrates, and hydroxyl-ketones through a standard chromatographic column, which separates them prior to their measurement by a mass spec. The development of this methodology involves collaboration of a team of scientists, instrument builders, machinists, and software engineers to create a new instrument. It is important to maintain the capability to build such instruments in an academic institution. This project involves the training of a graduate student in instrumentation science, providing a platform for training the next generation of analytical chemists.