FAST SPECIES-SELECTIVE SCREENING FOR ORGANOLEAD COMPOUNDS IN GASOLINEBY MULTICAPILLARY GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY WITH MICROWAVE-INDUCED PLASMA-ATOMIC EMISSION DETECTION

Multicapillary GC is proposed and optimized as a tool for the introduc tion of gasoline samples into an MIP atomic emission spectrometer for the fingerprinting and species-selective analysis for organolead addit ives. The coupling of multicapillary GC with MIP-AES not only allows s peciation of alkyllead but is also faster than analysis for total lead in gasoline by flame AAS or ICP-AES. All five tetraalkyllead species (MenEt4-nPb, n=1-4) are baseline separated and quantified within 10 s in comparison with about 10-20 min required by conventional GC procedu res. Separation is carried out in the isothermal mode but neither reso lution nor sample capacity is sacrificed in comparison with convention al capillary GC with oven temperature gradient programming. The throug hput reaches about 100 samples h(-1). The detection limit is below 1 m u g l(-1) and the linearity range spans four concentration decades. Th e method was validated by the analysis of the NIST SRM 2715 (Lead in F uel) reference material.