GC/MS: A Valid Tool for Soil Gas Hydrocarbons Speciation

Abstract

This work describes an alternative method based on GC/MS technique with SCAN-ion approach for speciation of hydrocarbons contained in soil gas matrices and sampled on solid sorbent tubes (coconut shell charcoal).

Advances in Hydrocarbon Speciation for Soil Gas Analysis

“…The GC/MS method previously developed by the authors [13] showed criticisms that are properly investigated in the present work. Moreover, important advances are also reported.…”

“…The new method was based on the extraction of more representative ions (ions extraction, IE) of the aliphatic components from TIAC [13].…”

“…All the fortified samples, prepared as reported above, were extracted by 1 mL of d-IS (2 µg/mL of IS in CS 2 ) for every 100 mg of carbon as well as real samples and analyzed by GC/MS technique, as reported elsewhere [13]. The analyses were carried out using an Agilent 7890A gas chromatography (GC) equipped with a 5975C inert mass spectrometer detector (MSD) with a triple axis detector.…”

“…In the last few years, the authors have worked on the fine tuning of an innovative empirical GC/MS method allowing to overcome the main critical issues of the official approach for the aliphatic fractions (presence of solvent peak, presence of interferences, hard integration, etc.) [13].…”

“…On the basis of the correlation between data from real samples, analyzed by both the method proposed by the authors [13] and the official method [12], the validity of the new approach had been verified. These preliminary results were very promising and encouraging.…”