Odour-causing organic compounds in wastewater treatment plants: Evaluation of headspace solid-phase microextraction as a concentration technique

Abstract

Odorous emissions from wastewater collection systems and treatment facilities affecting quality of life have given local populations reasons to complain for decades. In order to characterise the composition of such malodorous emissions, a method based on headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has been developed to determine a list of compounds belonging to different chemical families, which have been previously described as potentially responsible for odour complaints, in wastewater matrices. Some parameters affecting the chromatographic behaviour of the target compounds were studied (e.g. splitless time). Experimental conditions affecting the extraction process (temperature, time and salt content) were evaluated by applying a factorial design at two levels. Using a DVB/CAR/PDMS fibre and the optimised HS-SPME conditions, calibration curves were constructed with detection limits in the range of 0.003-0.6 μg L(-1). Recovery values higher than 70% and relative standard deviation values between 5 and 16% (n=5) were obtained for all compounds and found to be satisfactory. In wastewater samples, a decrease in the concentration of the analysed compounds through the different treatments was observed. Most of the target analytes were found in influent samples while only octanal and carvone were detected in samples from the plant effluent.

Odour‐causing compounds in air samples: Gas–liquid partition coefficients and determination using solid‐phase microextraction and GC with mass spectrometric detection

“…Our group is involved in a research project dealing with odour characterisation in WWTPs. We have previously evaluated an SPME method to determine a group of odour‐causing substances belonging to different chemical families in wastewaters . In the present study, we describe a method based on SPME with GC‐MS for the air monitoring of odour‐causing compounds.…”

Treatment of odor by a seashell biofilter at a wastewater treatment plant

“…These constant odors could cause odor complaints depending on wind direction and off-site neighbors. The fecal odors found during the September sampling (Table 2) may have originated from indole or skatole, whose odors were previously characterized as fecal in the water of wastewater treatment plants, or from other unidentified compounds (Godayol et al, 2011;Hwang et al, 1995). In the literature, indole and skatole have not been detected in air samples from wastewater treatment plant samples due to the difficulty of analytical analysis for trace levels of these compounds.…”

Simultaneous determination of ten taste and odor compounds in drinking water by solid-phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

“…3a). This is because migration from the solution to the headspace phase predominates for the semi-volatile analytes at the studied temperature range (Godayol et al, 2011). Moreover, higher temperature decreases the time to reach equilibrium.…”

“…However, GC/MS is not sensitive enough to measure very small amounts of T&O compounds without enrichment (Godayol et al, 2011). To date, a wide variety of extraction and enrichment techniques, including closed-loop stripping (Malleret et al, 2001), purge and trap (P&T) (Chen et al, 2010a), membrane-based extraction (Zander and Pingert, 1997) and stir bar sorptive extraction (Ochiai et al, 2001) have been established and applied to some T&O compounds.…”