Characterisation and calibration of active sampling Solid Phase Microextraction applied to sensitive determination of gaseous carbonyls.

A characterisation of a system designed for active sampling of gaseous compounds with Solid Phase Microextraction (SPME) fibres is described. This form of sampling is useful to automate sampling while considerably reducing the sampling times. However, the efficiency of this form of sampling is also prone to be affected by certain undesirable effects such as fibre saturation, competition or displacement effects between analytes, to which particular attention should be paid especially at high flow rates. Yet, the effect of different parameters on the quantitivity of the results has not been evaluated. For this reason, in this study a careful characterisation of the influence of the parameters involved in active sampling SPME has been performed. A versatile experimental set-up has been designed to test the influence of air velocities and fluid regime on the quantitivity and reproducibility of the results. The mathematical model applied to the calculation of physical parameters at the sampling points takes into consideration the inherent characteristics of gases, distinctive from liquids and makes use of easily determined experimental variables as initial/boundary conditions to get the model started. The studies were carried out in the high-volume outdoor environmental chambers, EUPHORE. The sample subjected to study was a mixture of three aldehydes: pentanal, hexanal and heptanal and the determination methodology was O-(2,3,4,5,6-pentafluorobenzyl)-hydroxylamine hydrochloride (PFBHA) on-fibre derivatisation. The present work proves that the determination procedure is quantitative and sensitive, independent from experimental conditions: temperature, relative humidity or ozone levels. With our methodology, the influence on adsorption of three inter-related variables, i.e., air velocity, flow rate and Reynolds numbers can be separated, since a change can be exerted in one of them while keeping the others constant.