Determination of Minimum Identifiable Quantities for Target Analysis of Semivolatile Organic Compounds

Abstract

Thirty-five semivolatile compounds from the phenolic, chlorinated hydrocarbon, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon classes are analyzed with the use of lightpipe-based gas chromatography/infrared spectrometry in order to determine the minimum identifiable quantities (MIQ) as defined in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Method 8410. MIQs for all compounds studied are in the range of 1 to 20 nanograms. The present results represent an improvement of about an order of magnitude over those reported earlier in U.S. EPA studies. An important factor in achieving this improvement is the use of selected wavelength chromatogram reconstructions for locating high-noise chromatogram data files. These data suggest that target analysis of complex semivolatile environmental organic samples is achievable by lightpipe GC/FT-IR.