Development of methods for the analysis of volatile organic compounds in the soil using a portable chromatograph based on microfluidic systems

Abstract

      Examination of the content of volatile organic compounds in the soil is a trivial task solved by modern laboratory analysis mainly by chromatographic methods (gas chromatography (GC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), thin layer chromatography (TLC)) by hybrid methods (GC and HPLC with mass-selective detection ) [1]. However, there are tasks of analytical chemistry that are problematic to solve
with existing laboratory methods. Such tasks include the analysis of trace amounts of VOCs in the soil during the examination of fires. Often, the ratio of organic substances contained in a sample after its selection, transportation and preparation changes prior to analysis, which greatly complicates the interpretation of analysis results. This makes actual the development of devices and VOC methods in the soil, which allow accurate and highly sensitive component analysis of organic compounds in the field.
       The article presents the implementation of the methodology for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of volatile organic compounds in the soil using a portable gas chromatograph based on microfluidic systems. It is shown that when using vapor-phase analysis and a portable gas chromatograph based on microfluidic systems (weight - 1.5 kg, dimensions - 220×145×55 mm), allows to provide time of the analysis is 120 seconds, sensitivity is 2×10-2 mg / kg (benzene ) when determining the qualitative and quantitative composition of the mixture of aliphatic and unsaturated hydrocarbons in the soil. A significant reduction in the mass-dimensional characteristics of the device is due to the use in its design of microfluidic systems for dosing and chromatographic separation of the sample being analyzed [2].