A new airborne single particle mass spectrometer: PALMS-NG

Abstract

An updated version of the Particle Analysis by Laser Mass Spectrometry (PALMS) instrument, termed PALMS-NG (-Next Generation), has been designed to characterize particles in the troposphere and stratosphere. Two PALMS-NG instruments have been built: a Purdue University version, which has flown on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ER-2 and DC-8, and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) version, which has flown on the NASA WB-57F. The general design and construction are nearly identical. New features and construction techniques are described here. These include a new inlet, optics for an extended size range of particle measurement, and a unique bipolar s-shaped mass spectrometer with higher resolution. These make the -NG instrument a significant improvement over the original flight PALMS which was first flown 25 years ago.

Copyright © 2024 American Association for Aerosol Research

EDITOR:

• Jim Smith

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the NASA Earth Science Project Office (ESPO) team for their outstanding support during the two DCOTSS deployments and AEROMMA, the ER-2, DC-8 and WB-57F aircraft crew members, the pilots, and the weather forecasting teams. We gratefully acknowledge the Jonathan Amy Facility for Chemical Instrumentation at Purdue University for precision machining and electronic work in support of this project. We also want to acknowledge the Harvard University D-POPS team for work on the ER-2 inlet line used by PALMS-NG during DCOTSS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

PALMS-NG work at Purdue was supported by NASA DCOTSS grant 80NSSC19K1058. PALMS-NG work at NOAA was supported by NOAA base and climate funding and the NOAA Earth’s Radiation Budget Initiative, as well as by NOAA cooperative agreements NA17OAR4320101 and NA22OAR4320151. M. A-G. held an NRC Research Associateship award at NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory.