Abstract
Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS) has evolved in the last decade as a fast and high sensitivity sensor for the real-time monitoring of volatile compounds. Its applications range from environmental sciences to medical sciences, from food technology to bioprocess monitoring. Italian scientists and institutions participated from the very beginning in fundamental and applied research aiming at exploiting the potentialities of this technique and providing relevant methodological advances and new fundamental indications. In this review we describe this activity on the basis of the available literature. The Italian scientific community has been active mostly in food science and technology, plant physiology and environmental studies and also pioneered the applications of the recently released PTR-ToF-MS (Proton Transfer Reaction-Time of Flight-Mass Spectrometry) in food science and in plant physiology. In the very last years new results related to bioprocess monitoring and health science have been published as well. PTR-MS data analysis, particularly in the case of the ToF based version, and the application of advanced chemometrics and data mining are also aspects characterising the activity of the Italian community.
Highlights
IntroductionBeing released in many biological and technological processes, and being ubiquitous, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are important in several fields, including environmental and atmospheric chemistry, plant biology, food science and technology, medical sciences
Being released in many biological and technological processes, and being ubiquitous, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are important in several fields, including environmental and atmospheric chemistry, plant biology, food science and technology, medical sciences.An efficient monitoring of VOCs, for such wide ranging applications, needs analytical techniques that are capable of dealing with challenging issues: first, the need of separating and quantifying VOCs in complex gas mixtures; second, the need to detect concentrations that may span a large range, from trace levels to parts per million or more; and third, the need to track concentrations that rapidly change in time
Nowadays Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS) is becoming well-established in agrifood science and in particular it is the reference technique for in-nose direct analysis applications where monitoring in real time at high sensitivity is crucial [46]
Summary
Being released in many biological and technological processes, and being ubiquitous, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are important in several fields, including environmental and atmospheric chemistry, plant biology, food science and technology, medical sciences. The PTR-MS technique has the advantage of allowing real-time monitoring of most VOCs with very low detection limits [9]. In PTR-MS the neutral VOC molecules are ionized via a proton transfer reaction, typically with the hydronium ion (H3O+). PTR-MS has been coupled with other detectors, such as ion trap [12,13] and time-of-flight mass analysers [9,14]. The great advantage of ToF analysers is the enhanced analytical information provided They may reach a resolution up to about 7,000 (m/∆m), allowing to separate many isobaric compounds. The subsequent sections are organized according to the different applications and research fields: food science and technology (Section 3), on-line VOC monitoring (Section 4), environmental sciences (Section 5), health and medical sciences (Section 6)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call