DETERMINATION OF AMINES IN AIR AND WATER USING DERIVATIZATION COMBINED WITH SOLID-PHASE MICROEXTRACTION

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a simple, fast, economic and sol vent-free sample preparation technique. The selectivity and sensitivit y of this technique for the determination of amines in gaseous and aqu eous matrices can be significantly improved by coupling derivatization with SPME during sampling. Derivatization has advantages in enhancing coating-gas and coating-water partition coefficients for amines, thus improving SPME extraction efficiency and method sensitivity. For air analysis, 4-nitrophenyl trifluoroacetate effectively derivatized volat ile and polar amines into less polar amides in the gaseous phase, with limits of detection (LODs) at the low pg/ml level when gas chromatogr aphy-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) was used. For aqueous sample analysis, pentafluorobenzylaldehyde was utilized to convert polar prim ary amines into their less polar imines directly in aqueous solutions. Derivatization-SPME provided LODs at low ng/ml to pg/ml levels with G C-FID. Compared to direct SPME, derivatization-SPME lowered LODs by tw o-three orders of magnitude for the analysis of amines in air and aque ous solutions.