Dr. Erik Krogh from Vancouver Island University presented us, on last Friday’s NRESi colloquium, a great way to utilize the amazing technology of direct mass spectrometry – mount it on a van and enjoy a chill ride on a sunny day. Well this is just a joke, but the important message here is, the way of testing air qualities and its result could be possibly reshaped and improved by combing the latest generation advanced mass spectrometry with a mobile platform. To make it even better, the direct mass spectrometry could work with or without membrane before inputting the prepared sample which could be either in gas, liquid, or even solid state, makes it a very versatile analysis machine that could be applied not only to air quality applications, but also some other important fields such as pharmaceutical industry, medical diagnostic application, food security monitoring, and etc.. The ability for this analytical monster to be tuned at various level, from the very beginning sample preparation stage, to the membrane level – right before taking them into its belly – all the way up to the mass spectrometry itself offers it great adaptability. And think about this, you can even do a quick calibration on the fly, which could be imagined only in a lab, that’s to be said when you’re moving around with it doing mobile sampling. When apply all of these advantages into the air quality monitoring work, which is one of the huge challenge we are facing and could be very sensitive and selective, this seems to make the job much easier than we could imagine. Considering the greatly reduced sample loss due to contamination during transportation and storage stage, and its lighting speed live feedback capability, this could greatly improve the result comparing with one coming from the conventional inside lab analysis process.

It’s very clear that Dr. Erik is very enthusiastic about what he’s doing and what he wants to share with us. I can just tell this by watching him switch from one slide to another full of graphs of results and findings and the continuously introduced new terms. Although I will much appreciate it if Dr. Erik could slow down a little bit and focus on several points with a deeper depth but it was a fantastic presentation anyway. The way he’s making fun of the funny experience either he or his beloved colleague helped ease the rapid pace of his speech. During the Q&A section, Dr. Erik answered questions with great details and did offer “answers” from different perspectives, which is a one thing we should learn from. If given chance, I would like to know what kind of disadvantages and/or technical constraints applying direct mass spectrometry to the air quality test/monitoring work, and potential counter measurements of them.