DISTILLATION PRECONCENTRATION AND CLEANUP OF AQUEOUS SAMPLES FOR DIRECT AQUEOUS INJECTION GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF VOLATILE POLAR ORGANIC POLLUTANTS

The applicability of distillation to concentrate and clean up heavily loaded aqueous samples for the analysis of volatile polar organic comp ounds by means of direct aqueous injection-gas chromatography was stud ied. Recoveries for acetone, acetonitrile, acrolein, acrylonitrile, bu tanone, 1, 4-dioxane, ethyl acetate, and 3-pentanone were in the range of 60.6 to 73.4% with relative standard deviations of 3.6 to 5.5%. Th e corresponding enrichment factors were in the order of 200. The recov ery did not depend on the concentration in the studied range of 0.70 t o 89 mu g/kg. The detection limits with the mass selective detector op erating in the selected ion monitoring mode were in the order of 0.1 m u g/kg. The method was successfully applied to treated waste water fro m a pharmaceutical factory. The content of the above analytes in the r eal sample ranged from below 0.1 to ca. 83 mu g/kg.