Environmental trace analysis of organics in water by glass capillary column chromatography and ancillary techniques. Products of ozonolysis.

A method employing a polymeric sorbent has been used for analysis of volatile organic components in water. Trace level organics are sparged from water with nitrogen gas and are concentrated on Tenax GC prior to analysis with either flame ionization gas chromatography or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Glass capillary columns were used to obtain maximum resolution of chromatographic peaks. Specifically, the method has been applied to a qualitative and quantitative study of the products which result from ozonization of secondary treated domestic wastewater. The principal volatile products of ozonolysis are n-hexanal, n-heptanal, n-octanal and n-nonanal. Representative samples contained 0.7 ppb** of n-heptanal and less than 1 ppb of any of the volatile compounds.