Thermo Scientific Vanquish VF-D20, Operating Manual, Page: 32 / 182

3 • Detector Overview
Page 32 Vanquish Charged Aerosol Detectors Operating Manual
The largest aerosol droplets condense within the spray chamber (no. 5)
and are removed by the drain pump (no. 6) through the waste outlet.
Smaller droplets pass into a temperature-controlled evaporation tube
(no. 7), in which solvent and more volatile components are vaporized.
By the end of the evaporation tube, the resulting aerosol particles enter
the mixing chamber (no. 8), where they collide with a secondary stream
of ionized gas (no. 9) that has passed through a corona charger (no. 10).
Each dried aerosol particle undergoes surface diffusional charging,
where the level of charge per particle is proportional to particle size and
the cumulative charge of the population is directly related to the analyte
amount.
In the ion trap (no. 11), higher mobility ions and smaller charged
particles are removed. Lower mobility charged particles pass to a
conductive filter and aggregate charge is measured with a sensitive
electrometer (no. 12). Signal is processed by the electrometer board
(no. 13) and sent to the chromatography data system. The resulting gas
flow exits the detector through the gas exhaust (no. 14).