Volatile Organic Compounds Analysis in Soils Matrix Using Static Headspace Sampling

New Organic Monitoring Techniques
Poster Presentation

Presented by I. Eisele
Prepared by J. Zhang
Agilent technologies (Shanghai) Co.Ltd, No.412, Yinglun Road, shanghai, N/A, 200131, China


Contact Information: jie_zhang2@agilent.com; +862120209221


ABSTRACT

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are widely used in many industries as solvents or chemical intermediates. VOCs leaked or emitted into industry waste pollute the soil and sediments that the wastewater flows through. Considering that many VOCs have serious adverse environmental effects and soil remediation is costly, decisions regarding the significance of contamination and cleanup must be based on accurate VOC measurement.
The static headspace is a technique which can introduce VOCs in the soil and sediments to GC or GC/MSD for analysis. The headspace method features easy operation and good repeatability. It allows use of an autosampler and minimize carryover.
In this work, the VOCs analysis in soil was performed on a headspace sampler coupled with 8860-5977B GC/MSD system. The system performance in terms of repeatability, linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantitation and method recovery rate were evaluated with calibration standards and spiked soil samples. The tested compounds are subset of EPA 5021 target compound list. The area repeatability for 36 VOCs components and 2 surrogates was in the range of 1.0%–4.3%; the LOD and LOQ achieved on blank matrix of quartz sand was from 0.51 to 1.21 µg/kg and from 1.7 to 4.1 µg/kg, respectively. The recovery rate in the real soil samples spiked at concentrations of 50 and 125 µg/kg was 78.2%–125.9% and 71.7%–108.7%. The linearity across the tested concentration range (4 µg/L-100 µg/L) is excellent, with the R2 of all components better than 0.996. The test results demonstrate HSS coupled with GC-MSD can provide accurate and reliable analysis on VOCs in soil matrix as required by EPA 5021 standard.