IDENTIFICATION OF IONS PRODUCED FROM COMPONENTS IN A COMPLEX MIXTURE USING MASS PEAK PROFILING

The characterization of complex mixtures is a goal of environmental, p harmaceutical, synthetic, and biochemists, When performing gas chromat ography-mass spectrometry analyses, total ion chromatograms for extrac ts of complex samples can provide numerous chromatographic peaks, Many of the compounds responsible for the peaks cannot be identified becau se the background-subtracted mass spec tra are degraded by coelution o f multiple components, In addition, library mass spectra often are una vailable for all compounds in a mixture, The authors used a high-resol ution technique, called mass peak profiling from selected-ion recordin g data, to characterize a complex sample from a U.S. Environmental Pro tection Agency Superfund site, The technique was adapted to determine compositions of molecular ions and other prominent ions corresponding to 47 chromatographic peaks.