Use of a drying cartridge in on-line solid-phase extraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A drying cartridge was used and optimized for the in-line elimination of water from the desorption eluent in on-line solid phase extraction-gas chromatography (SPE-GC). The cartridge is essentially a small stainless- steel precolumn packed with a drying agent which can be regenerated by simultaneous heating and purging with a moisture-free gas. The drying cartridge was mourned on an additional valve instead of between the SPE-GC transfer valve and the on-column injector to enable regeneration of the cartridge during the GC run and, thus, to increase sample throughput. Three drying agents were tested, viz. sodium sulfate, silica and molecular sieves. Although molecular sieves have the highest capacity, silica was preferred because of practical considerations. Large-volume injections were performed through the in-line drying cartridge using a mixture of 23 microcontaminants ranging widely in polarity and volatility. Four solvents were tested. With pentane and hexane, the more polar analytes were retained by the drying cartridge. Ethyl acetate and methyl acetate gave much better (and closely similar) recoveries all analytes. Because water elimination on the silica cartridge proved to be less critical than with ethyl acetate, this solvent was finally selected. The entire SPE-drying cartridge-GC setup was combined with mass spectrometric (MS) detection for the determination of a mixture of micropollutants in real-life water samples. With 10-ml tap water samples spiked at the 0.5 μg/l level, for the majority of the test compounds thee analyte recoveries generally were 60-106%, and (full-scan) detection limits typically were 0.01-0.03 μg/l. Some very polar analytes such as, e.g. dimethoate, were (partially) sorbed onto the silica packing of the drying cartridge.