Giocastro, Barbara; Braas, Sebastian; Saraji, Mohammed; Gröger, Thomas; Noll-Borchers, Martina; Schnelle-Kreis, Jürgen; Sklorz, Martin; Ehlert, Sven; Eichelberg, Rolf; Zimmermann, Ralf; Adam, Thomas. (2022). Development of an in-situ Measurement System for the Simultaneous Characterization of VOCs and SVOCs in Ambient Aerosols. International Symposium on Chromatography (33., 2022, Budapest).

Abstract

In this poster, we present the concept and the workflow of a novel mobile measuring system for the simultaneous analysis of gaseous and condensed/bound volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and semi volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in ambient aerosols. The concept allows stand-alone, fully-automated and parallel sampling of the particulate matter (PM) and gaseous phase and its subsequently and successive analysis by thermal desorption combined to gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Collected PM and gas phase compounds are desorbed on individual units. The PM desorption unit is designed for an on-line derivatization of polar organic compounds before desorption. A PAL based robotic unit is used for handling of collected samples and the instrument is able to operate autonomously and remotely for at least 24 h with up to hourly time resolution. The possibility to automatically exchange between the different modules together with the high-resolution time combined with sensitive analytics make the system a useful tool for long-term field measurements of ambient air.