GOALI: Plant-derived Biogenic Sulfur Emissions to the Environment

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This award is funded by the Environmental Chemical Sciences Program in the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation. Professor Rabi Musah of the Chemistry Department at the State University of New York at Albany (UAlbany) and collaborators at JEOL USA, Inc., a world leader in mass spectrometry, microscopy, and other analytical instrumentation, collaborate to develop new instruments that will measure volatile organosulfur compounds (VOSC) in the air in real time. Organosulfur species enter the atmosphere from both plants and other combustion processes and once in the atmosphere, VOSCs produce pollution, acid rain and cloud formation. The tools to be developed facilitate the study of not only the identity of organosulfur compounds in the atmosphere, but also their fate in the overall global sulfur cycle. The analytical tools and data processing software that are developed may find broad utility for analyses relevant to a range of other fields including chemistry, biochemistry, forensics chemistry, food sciences, agriculture, and medicine. Additionally, commercially available hardware and software are developed. The unique collaboration with JEOL USA Inc., extends the research capabilities of the UAlbany team. The fundamental research being performed by the team at UAlbany (i.e. investigations into the VOSC emission chemistry of vascular plants, and the study of the reactions of these compounds with other species in the environmental), occurs alongside more applied investigations at JEOL that are associated with extending the application of novel mass spectrometry technologies to solve a number of analytical problems in environmental science. Students and postdoctoral fellows benefit from immersion in both academic and industrial experiences, which serves to enhance their professional development.New ambient ionization mass spectrometric approaches are being developed to enable detection of individual plant-emitted volatile organosulfur compounds (VOSCs) in air in real time. The techniques are used for laboratory studies of the kinetics and products of the reactions of these newly discovered plant-derived VOSCs with environmentally-relevant free radicals. The developed analytical tools are expected to find broad utility for analyses relevant to a range problems in other fields. This work is performed in collaboration with scientists at JEOL USA Inc. The fundamental research is performed by the team at UAlbany, while JEOL pursues more applied investigations aimed at extending the application of novel ambient ionization mass spectrometry technologies to solve analytical problems in environmental science. Additionally, students benefit from immersion in both academic and industrial experiences, which serves to enhance their professional development.