Analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in aqueous samples by large volume injection gas chromatography–mass spectrometry using the through oven transfer adsorption desorption interface

•A new procedure for the determination of PAHs by LVI–GC–MS is given.•Nitrogen gas for solvent elimination in the TOTAD interface is used.•Good linearity, repeatability and sensitivity was achieved.

A new procedure for the determination of 17 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in aqueous samples by large volume injection–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (LVI–GC–MS) using the Through Oven Transfer Adsorption Desorption (TOTAD) interface with nitrogen for solvent elimination is developed and validated. Up to 75 mL of aqueous samples were injected to be sure that good solvent elimination were achieved, although 500 µL were sufficient to achieve the required sensitivity.The performance of the developed method can be considered good: the relative standard deviation (RSD), (n=3) was lower than 13.8% for all the target analytes, the concentration of each PAH being 0.25 μg L−1, the limit of detection and limit of quantitation ranged from 21.5 to 211.0 ng L−1 and from 71.7 to 703.3 ng L−1 respectively, and the correlation coefficients (R2) were all higher than 0.9764 in the 1–16 μg L−1 range.

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