Simultaneous determination of odorous volatile organic compounds with gas chromatography and a thermal desorber: A case study on methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, butyl acetate, toluene, and xylene

In this study, a series of experiments were conducted to examine the feasibility of the gas chromatographic approach for the quantification of several odorous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in environmental samples which included methyl ethyl ketone, isobutyl alcohol, methyl isobutyl ketone, and butyl acetate plus benzene, toluene, and xylene (namely, BTX). The gaseous working standards (WS) of seven compounds were initially calibrated at varying concentration ranges by direct injection (DI) into GC injector. The detection properties of these compounds were then tested with a thermal desorber (TD). The relative sensitivities of three aromatic VOCs differed greatly between DI and TD methods. In contrast, four polar VOCs tend to consistently exhibit relative enhancement in response factors with increasing molecular mass (an exception of butyl acetate), regardless of method. The TD-based analysis was reliable enough to detect all target VOCs below their odor threshold values with their detection limit (DL) values. This TD method, when tested against a number of environmental samples collected from several industrial facilities, confirmed the presence of these odorous VOCs at a wide concentration range.