Development and Deployment of a Particle-into-Liquid sampling - Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometer (PiLs-ESI/MS) for Characterization of Water-Soluble Biomass Burning Aerosols

Biomass burning (BB) is a major influence on Earth's atmosphere as it is an important source of primary and secondary aerosols. Measuring the aerosol composition for such complex mixtures remains an analytical challenge and the characterization of the water-soluble portion of BB aerosol has been traditionally limited to off-line analysis and/or qualitative techniques. In this work, we present a new method of directly interfacing a particle-into-liquid sampler with an electrospray ionization mass spectrometer (PiLs-ESI/MS). This technique allows real-time, sensitive, and chemically-specific speciation of water-soluble organics and inorganics for the quantification of fresh BB aerosol sampled during the recent Firelab component of the NOAA FIREX experiments. The aerosol composition is fuel and combustion-phase dependent, and several polar organic species thought to be main contributors to aerosol brown carbon and secondary organic aerosol were measured.