Rapid Screening of Pollutants in Soil by Curiepoint Pyrolysis/Evaporation Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The qualitative and quantitative analysis of pollutants in soil and sediments is an expensive and time consuming task since each group of anthropogenic compounds requires an other analytical approach. Therefore some sort of rapid screening of the soil or sediment sample as such for polluting components is very desirable.

Curiepoint evaporation and pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry have been applied to two “suspicious” samples.

The following anthropogenics show up in the gas chromatograms or total ion currents: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, halo-organics, aliphatic hydrocarbons, hetero-aromatics, elementary sulphur, cyanides, pyrolysis products of synthetic polymers, etc.

Hence, virtually all organic pollutants and a number of inorganic ones (no heavy metals, however) are revealed within a couple of hours by these techniques, when they are present above the detections limits of the detector(s) used (MS, FID, FPD, ECD).

After this screening procedure separate quantitative analyses can be applied to measure the precise amounts of individual components.

Details will be published elsewhere.