Development of a SPME-GC method for the determination of organic compoundsin wastewater

A manual SPME method is presented for the analysis of organic compounds in industrial wastewater. 24 compounds commonly found in the wastewater of a c hemical plant in northern Germany have been selected as reference compounds . Precision, linearity, and detection limits have been determined. Moreover , the effect of methanol content, pH value, salt content, and an excess of compounds on the extraction process have been studied. Several compounds ha ve been investigated for their applicability as internal standards to quant ify the compounds of interest. Since the method will later be transferred t o a fully automated SPME-GC system, which will be operated directly on-site at an industrial wastewater purification plant, special attention has been paid to the analysis of real wastewater samples. In this context, the fibr e stability has been studied by performing 53 extraction/desorption cycles from one wastewater sample. Neither a decrease in fibre performance nor in precision has been observed indicating that the proposed method is suitable for the analysis of real wastewater.