Measurement of ammonia, amines and iodine compounds using protonated water cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometry

Pfeifer, Joschka; Simon, Mario; Heinritzi, Martin; Piel, Felix; Weitz, Lena; Wang, Dongyu; Granzin, Manuel; Müller, Tatjana; Bräkling, Steffen; Kirkby, Jasper; Curtius, Joachim; Kürten, Andreas

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-2501-2020

Articles | Volume 13, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-2501-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The CERN CLOUD experiment (ACP/AMT inter-journal SI)

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-2501-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 5

Research article

|

19 May 2020

Research article |

| 19 May 2020

Measurement of ammonia, amines and iodine compounds using protonated water cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometry

Joschka Pfeifer, Mario Simon, Martin Heinritzi, Felix Piel, Lena Weitz, Dongyu Wang, Manuel Granzin, Tatjana Müller, Steffen Bräkling, Jasper Kirkby, Joachim Curtius, and Andreas Kürten

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Final revised paper (published on 19 May 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Jul 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of Pfiefer et al - Measurement of ammonia, amines, and iodine species using protonated water cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometry', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Aug 2019
- AC1: 'Reply to Referee 1 on "Measurement of ammonia, amines and iodine species using protonated water cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometry"', Joschka Pfeifer, 31 Jan 2020
RC2: 'Comments on Measurement of ammonia, amines and iodine species using protonated water cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometry', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to Referee 2 on "Measurement of ammonia, amines and iodine species using protonated water cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometry"', Joschka Pfeifer, 31 Jan 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Joschka Pfeifer on behalf of the Authors (27 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 Mar 2020) by Jonathan Abbatt

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Mar 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The Authors have made extensive revisions to this manuscript. The current version is of high quality and was enjoyable to read. Pending some minor revisions, this manuscript is acceptable for publication in AMT.

Lines 306-307: The Authors should be clear here that the data is not shown in the Figure. Where the response times corresponding to the Figure are discussed (Lines 309-312), it may be easier to relate between the two if the response times are reported in minutes (consistent with the x-axis in the Figure).

Line 373: There is a citation formatting issue here for von Bobrutzki et al, with the 'von' missing.

Section 3.7: The discussion here is, generally, quite well presented. One detail remains, however, regarding the comparison of the PICARRO against the CI-APi-TOF due to reporting NH3 measurements from the PICARRO well below its detection limit (stated as 366 pptv on Line 237). At Line 419, the 'background' for the PICARRO is reported as ~200 pptv, but this is lower than its detection limit. This should be replaced with a statement clearly stating that the backgrounds were below the detection limit. This same approach is necessary in discussing the detection of NH3 by the PICARRO in the subsequent comparison. Where PICARRO NH3 is less than 366 pptv, the discussion should not comment on the performance of the instrument as it cannot detect such levels (e.g. 'can hardly detect this decrease in the VMR' on Lines 428-429 and again in the last sentence of the section at Lines 449-450). Likewise, NH3 data from the PICARRO that is below the LOD should either not be presented in Figures 8a and 8b or a horizontal line on the plot denoting the PICARRO LOD should be provided so readers are not expecting more from this instrument.

Figure 6: The temperature color scale can be removed as only two temperatures are on this figure. The corresponding T values can be added to the caption and/or the legend for each of the three data series.

Figure 7: Should the 'primary ions' here be 'reagent ions' in order to be consistent with the figure caption?

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (22 Mar 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (22 Mar 2020) by Jonathan Abbatt

AR by Joschka Pfeifer on behalf of the Authors (06 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (17 Apr 2020) by Jonathan Abbatt

Short summary

Ammonia is an important atmospheric trace gas that affects secondary aerosol formation and, together with sulfuric acid, the formation of new particles. A measurement technique is presented that uses high-resolution mass spectrometry and protonated water clusters for the ultrasensitive detection of ammonia at single-digit parts per trillion by volume levels. The instrument is further capable of measuring amines and a suite of iodine compounds at sub-parts per trillion by volume levels.