A novel needle trap device with nanoporous silica aerogel packed for sampling and analysis of volatile aldehyde compounds in air

In this study a needle trap device (NTD) packed with nanoporous silica aerogel (NPSA) was developed as a rapid determination technique for formaldehyde and acrolein in air. The performance of NTD-NPSA, which was characterized using several analytical figures of merit including linearity, repeatability, recovery, limit of detection (LOD), and limit of quantification (LOQ), was then compared to NIOSH 2541 method. The LOD and LOQ of NTD-NPSA for the two compounds were 0.01-0.02 μg L− 1 and 0.033-0.068 μg L− 1, respectively. The intra and inter-day relative standard deviation of method were 3.6-6.9% and 5.1-9.4%, respectively. The result of this comparative study showed that NTD-NPSA had a better performance than the NIOSH 2541 method. Unlike the NIOSH 2541method, the NTD-NPSA is a solvent-free technique, in which the desorption of the analyte is directly performed thermally inside the gas chromatograph injection port. The fact that NTD-NPSA does not require a solvent and, also, the reusability of the technique can reduce the total sampling costs for the procedure compared with costs for solvent-based sampling and extraction methods. Thus, this technique is a reliable and effective method for the determination of aldehyde in both indoor and outdoor environments.