Determination of Acetaldehyde in Water from Plastic Bottles Using Hot Injection Trapping (HIT) Technique on GC-MS

Martin Perkins

19th October 2017

Acetaldehyde is a volatile, colourless liquid with a high fruity odour that can cause irritation of the respiratory tract and has been classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It has been reported to leach into water from plastic bottles under certain conditions. Due to the volatility of acetaldehyde, headspace analysis is the method of choice, but static headspace can be limited in terms of sensitivity. One approach to increase sensitivity is to perform multiple headspace injections. Within this application note, we show how Hot Injection Trapping (HIT) can be fully automated to enrich acetaldehyde from water samples using a headspace technique. The HIT technique enables the trapping of multiple headspace injections from the same sample on a cold inlet and consequently improves limits of detection (LODs). This application note shows how HIT technique enables the quantification of Acetaldehyde present in water down to 1 µg/L with linearity of 0.999 and %rsd of 2.24 (n=5) on a 5 µg/L sample.