FAST GC AND GC-MS ANALYSIS OF EXPLOSIVES.docVIP

Petroleum Coal IISSN 1337-7027 Available online at www.vurup.sk/pc Petroleum Coal 49 (2), 72-79, 2007 FAST GC AND GC-MS ANALYSIS OF EXPLOSIVES * Michal Kirchner, Eva Matisová , Svetlana Hrouzková, Renáta Hú?ková Institute of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinského 9, Bratislava 812 37, Slovak Republic. michal.kirchner@, eva.matisova@stuba.sk, svetlana.hrouzkova@stuba.sk, renata.huskova@stuba.sk Received April 2, 2007 accepted June 12, 2007 Abstract In this paper fast GC-ECD and GC-MS utilizing short narrow-bore capillary columns was evaluated for separation and detection of selected explosives. For injection splitless and on-column inlets were tested. In the case of MS detection different energies of electrons were tested in order to improve detectability of analyzed compounds. To eliminate strong adsorption of difficult explosives analyte protectants, formerly developed for GC analysis of pesticide residues, were tested. Significant improvements of peak shapes, linearity of responses and LODs were reached. Keywords: explosives, fast gas chromatography, fast GC-MS, analyte protectants, matrix effects 1. Introduction High explosives encountered in the forensic laboratory may be either pure or nearly pure compounds: nitroaromatics, nitrate esters, nitramines, or mixtures of these with or without other [1] ingredients . Gas chromatography (GC) methods with the advantage of a high resolving power are [2] important to the trace analysis of explosives . The highly efficient GC separation with the capillary columns permits the analysis of explosive oils, isomers of nitroaromatics and the high explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and hexogen (RDX) in one run . [3] The importance of GC and also the distinct advantage over capillary electrophoresis and high- performance liquid chromatography is based on its compatibility with di