Rapid determination of acrolein and crotonaldehyde in tobacco smoke with water-assisted APCI-MS/MS

- A method was developed to rapidly detect acrolein and crotonaldehyde in gas phase by a modified atmospheric pressure chemical ionization tandem mass spectrometry (APCI-MS/MS).
- The influence of water on the aldehyde ionization was investigated, and ion transformation process was discussed in details.
- With the addition of water, the spectra of tobacco smoke became much simpler, and the influence from the isomeric compounds was reduced.

The methods most frequently used in the aldehyde detection were based on derivatization reactions with disadvantage of time-consuming. In this study, a method was developed to rapidly detect acrolein and crotonaldehyde by a water-assisted atmospheric pressure chemical ionization tandem mass spectrometry (APCI-MS/MS). With the addition of water, solvent ion signal was suppressed due to the formation of protonated water cluster, which benefited for the analysis of spectra. Two orders of linear range were obtained in the concentration from 0.01 to 1 μg/L with the addition of water. Finally, this method was successfully applied to detect acrolein and crotonaldehyde in tobacco smoke with analytical period less than four minutes. The experimental results indicate that the developed method has the potential application in environmental monitoring of acrolein and crotonaldehyde.

Rapid determination of acrolein and crotonaldehyde in gas phase was performed on a modified APCI-MS/MS, which introduced the gas sample through capillary directly.166