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What kind of pollutants are found in hospital and municipal sewage and in surface waters? What is their quantity and persistence in the environment? These questions can now be answered even more precisely by scientists from the Faculty of Environmental Engineering of Lublin University of Technology. It’s all thanks to the new tandem mass spectrometer, which can be described simply as four symmetrically arranged parallel metal rods and a time-of-flight (TOF) analyzer.

- The purchased spectrometer allows you to identify or test the concentration of tens of thousands of organic compounds, even when they are present in complex mixtures and their concentration is at the ppb-level, i.e. one molecule in a billion. This is possible thanks to the use of two mechanisms for separating ions in the tested samples. These mechanisms take place in separate elements of the device, the so-called quadrupole, which acts as a filter that allows only certain ions to pass through, and the time of flight analyzer, which separates ions by using differences in their speed in the vacuum - says Prof. Małgorzata Pawłowska, head of the Department of Biomass and Waste Conversion into Biofuels, Faculty of Environmental Engineering.

The tandem mass spectrometer is used by the Lublin scientists to test cytostatics (drugs used in the fight against cancer), antibiotics, selected hormones in hospital and municipal sewage and in surface waters.

- This type of equipment allows not only to determine the content of the molecules in complex mixtures with high sensitivity and accuracy, but also to learn a lot about the structure of the compound. The scope of its application is wide, because we can analyze compounds with a weight of up to 10,000 amu (atomic mass unit), with a high resolution of approx. 60,000 – explains Prof. Jacek Czerwiński from the Department of Environmental Protection Engineering at LUT.

The Lublin scientists point to the unique features of the device, such as high sensitivity, reliability as well as extraordinary accuracy and precision of the obtained results.

- Its main advantages are the possibilities associated with very high resolution and low limits of determination (10^-12 g) - informs Prof. Czerwiński.

The device was purchased as part of the project entitled “Research center for pro-environmental and energy-saving materials and technologies (CeBMaT)”. Its cost is nearly PLN 2.4 million.