AS233: Speciation of Dichloromethane and Chloroform Using Negative Ion SIFT-MS

Martin Perkins

30th January 2020

Speciation of Dichloromethane and Chloroform Using Negative Ion SIFT-MS:

Organochlorine compounds, along with other VOCs such as the BTEX group of compounds (benzene, toluene and the xylenes) continue to be significant contaminants in air, soil and water. Various techniques have been employed to analyse the compounds, the most common being purge and trap followed by GC analysis. These techniques are generally slow, and the need to remove water from the matrix prior to injection adds further complications. Direct analysis using SIFT-MS mitigates this step and can lead to significant increases in throughput, allowing environmental test laboratories to greatly increase the number of samples tested, and decrease the turnaround time and cost. However, one drawback with single polarity SIFT-MS, is its inability to effectively speciate chloroform and dichloromethane.

In this Application Note we show that by using negative ion SIFT-MS, it is possible to directly speciate dichloromethane and chloroform, in real-time. This will enable laboratories to offer straightforward, fast analysis of these two important compounds without compromising other compounds in the VOC suite.

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