A simple and rapid analysis for gas-phase polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons using an organic-solvent-based method

Monitoring of atmospheric organic pollutants is usually conducted by means of active or passive air samplers. In this study, we developed a simple, conventional, economic and fast sampling method for volatile and semivolatile compounds that is based on a liquid-phase organic solvent. Laboratory tests showed the feasibility of the method, and the major parameters of the method, such as temperature, organic solvent, carrier gas and air flow rate, were preliminarily optimized. For 16 kinds of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the recovery, relative standard deviation and detection limit were ranged from 87.0 to 104.4%, 2.6 to 15.6% and 0.08 to 0.45 ng mL−1, respectively. Field application of the new method also showed good sampling efficiency for PAHs in real air samples, comparable to the results with an XAD-2 resin-based method. The similarity was closed to 1, suggesting that the new method is suitable for sampling of volatile and semivolatile organic pollutants in air and has great potential for air-pollution monitoring.