Gas Chromatography – Ion Mobility Spectrometry as a tool for quick detection of hazardous volatile organic compounds in indoor and ambient air: A university campus case study

Abstract

Society’s concerns about the citizens’ exposure to possibly dangerous environments have recently risen; nevertheless, the assessment of indoor air quality still represents a major contemporary challenge. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are among the main factors responsible for deteriorating air quality conditions. These analytes are very common in daily-use environments and they can be extremely hazardous to human health, even at trace concentrations levels. For these reasons, their quick detection, identification, and quantification are crucial tasks, especially for indoor and heavily-populated scenarios, where the exposure time is usually quite long. In this work, a Gas Chromatography – Ion Mobility Spectrometry (GC-IMS) device was used for continuous monitoring indoor and ambient air environments at a large-scale, due to its outstanding levels of sensibility, selectivity, analytical flexibility, and almost real-time monitoring capability. A total of 496 spectra were collected from 15 locations of a university campus and posteriorly analysed. Overall, 23 compounds were identified among the 31 detected. Some of them, like Ethanol and 2-Propanol, were reported as being very hazardous to the human organism, especially in indoor environments. The achieved results confirmed the suitability of GC-IMS technology for air quality assessment and monitoring of VOCs and, more importantly, proved how dangerous indoor environments can be in scenarios of continuous exposure.

Ion Mobility Spectrometry Towards Environmental Volatile Organic Compounds Identification and Quantification: a Comparative Overview over Infrared Spectroscopy

“…In other to quantify all the analytes, a calibration protocol must be applied to obtain a calibration curve which, in turn, is used to convert intensity values to concentration values [76,96]. Figure 5 represents an ion mobility spectrometry spectrum, from a room air sample, in its two-and three-dimensional views, in which some of the represented VOCs are identified (1: monomer of ethanol, 2: monomer of 2-propanol, 3: dimer of ethanol, 4: monomer of acetone, and 5: dimer of 2-propanol, among many others) [97]. Considering the capacities and measurement procedures of the IMS, considerable studies have been undertaken around the identification of VOCs.…”

Using Gas Chromatography‐Ion Mobility Spectrometry to Investigate Volatile Compound Profiles in Human Sweat during COVID‐19 Vaccination

“…These could offer the remarkable capacity in qualitative and quantitative analysis of VOCs in the concentration ranges down to parts-per-billion or parts-per-trillion. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] Statistical analysis could then be applied to analyze GC-IMS results, classify samples into different groups and propose possible volatile markers for several tasks such as disease screening. Breath has been used for COVID-19 screening test based on analysis of the volatile markers, e. g. aldehyde such as methylpent-2-enal, [35][36][37] ethanal and octanal, [38] leading to development of breath-test electronic nose sensors for the screening.…”

Graphene Oxide Thin Films for Detection and Quantification of Industrially Relevant Alcohols and Acetic Acid

“…The main advantages of analytical techniques such as liquid chromatography (LC), gas chromatography (GC), mass spectrometry (MS), or ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) include their high levels of sensitivity and precision, wide dynamic concentration ranges, analytical flexibility, and almost real-time monitoring capability. Notwithstanding these advantages, they also have some limitations, namely, their lack of portability and high costs, the necessity for sample preparation, and the requirement for qualified personnel [ 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”