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NEWS FROM THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MASS SPECTROMETRY CONFERENCE James Riordon reports from Long Beach, CA.
Autonomous underwater MS pervise the operation]: three vehicle people and three sensor people,” says Short. “Both the sensor and vehicle technology are being developed in parallel,” he adds. Short points out that various analyses will require different instrumentation. The group is considering equipping future AUVs and remotely operated vehicles with ion traps or time-of-flight spectrometers to detect less volatile, higher mass compounds. Electrospray ion sources, which directly introduce water to the mass spectrometer, are one alternative to membrane interfaces, although the high salt content of sea water will require microdialysis or other systems to desalinate samples before analysis. Clearly, there’s a long way to go before researchers like Short and Fries produce underwater equivalents of probes that have visited Mars and Venus, but Short believes that we will someday deploy fleets of mass spectrometer-equipped AUVs in roving networks of in situ sensors to track water-borne chemicals, both natural and artificial, to their sources. THE USF CENTER FOR OCEAN TECHNOLOGY
In recent years, MS redepths would rupture the guide themselves to undersearchers have developed a membrane interface or water chemical sources. slew of instruments for use damage other components. In the meantime, the rein space probes destined for “We’d like to see, several searchers have tested their distant planets and other years from now, [reaching] prototype probe by turning heavenly bodies. Now, R. extreme depths, bottom-of- it loose for a 3-h excursion Timothy Short, David P. the-ocean depths,” says in Tampa Bay. Although Fries, and co-workers at the University of South Florida’s Center for Ocean Technology have produced a new type of autonomous MS probe for the other final frontier—Earth’s oceans. The prototype probe is a torpedoshaped device with a mass spectrometer, pumps, and ancillary systems housed in a 186-cm-long nose cone, which is mounted on a propellerdriven autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Volatile organic compounds Underwater mass spectrometer in an AUV nose cone. (VOCs) and dissolved gases with masses
