Development of syringe pump assisted headspace sampler

•We develop a syringe pump assisted headspace sampler with a needle trap device (NTD).•Extraction efficiency increases by increasing headspace volumes.•Extraction efficiency increases by increasing the number of extraction of a headspace.•The performance compared with static headspace sampling using a solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber.•Showed highly good recovery ranged from 97.2% to 105.8% for all tested VOCs in real sample.

This report describes a new platform for headspace sampling technique, i.e. a syringe pump assisted headspace sampler (SPHS). The stand type pump's syringe itself was used as a sealed sample vial and a needle trap device (NTD) was adopted as a miniaturized sorbent tube. The NTD was directly used to inject trapped VOCs into a gas chromatograph. The proposed sampler was designed to take a whole headspace volume instead of a portion of it so as to enhance easily the extraction efficiency. The performance of the SPHS-NTD system was evaluated and compared with the solid-phase microextraction (SPME) with a static headspace (HS) sampling technique. Calibration curves were obtained for aqueous TEX (toluene, ethylbenzene, and o-xylene) solutions in the concentration range of ∼0.1–45 ng/mL. The calculated limit of detections (LOD, S/N = 3) for TEX were 0.13 ng/mL or less. This SPHS-NTD was successfully applied to analyze aqueous TEX in river water samples and showed highly good recovery ranged from 97.2% to 105.8% for all tested VOCs.