Design of a Portable, Battery Powered Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer System for Real-Time Sampling of Materials
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Design of a Portable, Battery Powered Quadruple Mass Spectrometer System for Real-Time Sampling of Materials T. L. Porter,1 T. R. Dillingham,1 D. M. Cornelison,1 R. J. Venedam,2 and G. Williams3 1
Northern Arizona University, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, U.S.A.
2
National Security Technologies LLC, Las Vegas, NV, 89193, U.S.A
3
Brigham Young University, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Provo, UT, 84604, U.S.A ABSTRACT We have constructed a low cost, portable, battery-powered quadrupole mass spectrometer for use in the analysis of gaseous, liquid or solid field samples. The system may be configured for continuous sampling of ambient gas samples, or for the analysis of small solid, liquid or gas samples in sealed glass vials. The system is capable of measuring partial pressures down to the 10-10 Torr range, and may be operated on battery power for several hours in a field deployment. In this paper, we present information on the design and testing of the instrument, as well as data taken on chlorinated hydrocarbons and other contaminants in water. INTRODUCTION Field portable mass spectrometers have numerous demonstrated applications in areas such as environmental monitoring, industrial processes and monitoring, defense applications, and many others. Many of these instruments use technologies such as time-of-flight (Kore Technology, UK, Spectro Analytical, UK, tiny TOF, Johns Hopkins, others), quadrupole (SRS, Sunnyvale, CA, Bruker, MA, others), or GC/MS (ICX Technologies, Washington, DC, Inficon Syracuse, NY, others). Many of these instruments are not, however, truly self contained in a single package. For example, quadrupole-based mass spectrometers may not contain internal battery packs, data acquisition and display, or other components in a single, portable package. Many of these systems also use proprietary components, and have a high initial cost of acquisition. In this paper, we describe a fully portable quadrupole-based mass spectrometer system, built largely from off-the-shelf parts at a very low overall cost. The suitcase-sized system contains an integrated battery pack, miniature laptop computer for instrument control and data acquisition, quadrupole mass spectrometer, vacuum system, and gas inlet system. This system may also be configured for the analysis of small liquid, solid or gas samples in sealed glass vials. The quadrupole mass spectrometer is capable of measuring partial pressures in gas samples down to 10-10 Torr. We have tested this system in continuous ambient gas monitoring mode as well as on enclosed liquid samples. MATERIALS AND METHODS A schematic diagram of the basic mass spectrometer system is shown in figure 1, while a photograph of the layout of the instrument components inside of the case is shown in figure 2.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the major components of the mass spectrometer. The electrical system, including battery pack, charger and DC-DC converter are not shown. The quadrupole used in this system is a Micropole [1], consist
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