Rapid determination of essential oil compounds in Artemisia Selengensis Turcz by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry with microwave distillation and simultaneous solid-phase microextraction

In the work, for the first time, two solvent-free sample preparation techniques of microwave distillation (MD) and solid-phase microextraction (SPME) were combined, and developed for determination of essential oil compounds in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Using the proposed method, isolation, extraction and concentration of TCM essential oil compounds can be carried out in a single step. To demonstrate its feasibility, MD-SPME was compared with a conventional technique, steam distillation (SD), for gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of essential oil compounds in a TCM, Artemisia Selengensis Turcz. Forty-nine compounds in the TCM were separated and identified by the present method, while only 26 compounds were detected by SD method. Relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) values less than 9% show that the present method has good precision. The SD method required long time (6 h) to isolate of the essential oil, and large amount of organic solvent for further extraction, while MD–SPME needed little time (only 3 min) to prepare sample, and no organic solvent. These results show that MD–SPME–GC-MS is a simple, rapid and solvent-free method for determination of TCM essential oil.