Research and Application of Mass Spectrometry with Low Energy Electron Impact Ionization Source

Abstract

Abstract The changes of concentrations of O2 and CO2 in tail gas of fermentation industry reflect some important physiological and metabolic parameters in the fermentation process. Monitoring of the tail gas of fermentation has important significance for guiding the fermentation process. However, traditional monitoring methods are time-consuming with low precision and poor versatility, and are not suitable to monitor fermentation tail gas accurately in real time. In the process mass spectrometry, the traditional 70 eV electron impact ionization source will produce a large number of fragment ions, which may overlap with different substances, thus increasing the difficulty of qualitative analysis and causing inaccurate monitoring results. In order to realize real-time, on-line accurate monitoring of fermentation tail gas, a quadrupole process mass spectrometry based on electron impact ionization was developed for on-line analysis in this study. Through investigation of the relationship between emission current of filament and the electron receiving pole at low ionization energy, the ionization efficiency of the electron impact ionization source under low ionization energy mode was improved, and CO2, O2 and N2 were tested. The results showed that under the conditions of electron energy of 22 eV, electron receiving electrode of −22 V and filament emission current of 20–25 mA, the relative errors of quantitative detection of CO2 with volume fraction of higher than 0.023% and O2 with volume fraction of higher than 0.021% were all less than 1%. The instrument and the developed method had ideal application prospect in the rapid real-time, on-line monitoring of industrial processes.