Determination of the solubility of low volatility liquid organic compounds in water using volatile-tracer assisted headspace gas chromatography

• Determination of the solubility of low volatility liquid organic compounds (LVLO) in water.
• The method is based on a volatile-tracer assisted headspace gas chromatography.
• The present method is simple and suitable for measuring the solubility of LVLOs at elevated temperatures.

This study reports a new headspace gas chromatographic method (HS–GC) for the determination of water solubility of low volatility liquid organic compounds (LVLOs). The HS–GC analysis was performed on a set of aqueous solutions containing a range of concentrations of toluene-spiked (as a tracer) LVLOs, from under-saturation to over-saturation. A plot of the toluene tracer GC signal vs. the concentration of the LVLO results in two lines of different slopes that intersect at the concentration corresponding to the compound's solubility in water. The results showed that the HS–GC method has good precision (RSD <6.3%) and good accuracy, in which the relative deference between the data measured by the HS–GC method and the reference method were within 6.0%. The HS–GC method is simple and particularly suitable for measuring the solubility of LVLOs at elevated temperatures. This approach should be of special interest to those concerned about the impact of the presence of low-volatility organic liquids in waters of environmental and biological systems.