Thermal Desorption Aerosol Gas Chromatograph AMS (TAG-AMS)

The TAG-AMS project is a collaborative development between ARI, Professor Allen Goldstein at UC Berkley and Dr. Susanne Hering at Aerosol Dynamics, Inc.

The TAG-AMS combines the advantages of the Aerodyne High-Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) (Canagaratna et al, Mass. Spec. Rev., 26, 185-222, 2007) measuring size distribution and mass loading for ambient aerosol and the Thermal desorption Aerosol Gas Chromatograph (TAG) (Williams et al., AST, 40, 627-638, 2006) instrument providing hourly measurements of speciated organic compounds.  The combined TAG-AMS instrument shares the same electron impact ion source and HR-Tof-MS for analysis of the atmospheric aerosol constituents.  While atmospheric aerosols are measured using the HR-ToF-AMS to provide mass spectral analysis of the total organic aerosol, aerosol is collected simultaneously in the integrated collection and thermal desorption (CTD) cell of the TAG instrument.  The collected aerosol sample is subsequently desorbed from the CTD cell, chromatographically separated, and introduced into the AMS electron impact ionization region for analysis.  The combination of hourly time resolved TAG measurements with the complementary AMS measurements provides mass spectral analysis of the total organic aerosol (AMS) and concurrent detailed molecular level analysis (TAG).