Simultaneous Determination of 57 Kinds of Volatile Organic Compounds in Drinking Water Using A Dynamic Headspace Sampling Method Coupled to Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

The Dynamic headspace sampling (D-HS) method is a simple, environmentally friendly and sensitive method. In this paper, we report the measurement of 57 kinds of VOCs in drinking water by using D-HS coupled Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Under optimum dynamic headspace sampling conditions, such as 30% salinity of sample, equilibrium temperature at 40℃, equilibrium time for 20 min, purge flow of 60 mL/min and purge time for 2 min, the obtained detection limit was 0.2~7.0 μg/L, with r>0.9930 (except for epichlorohydrin at 0.9821). The obtained average recovery ratios were 82.1%-143% (n=3) in spiked drinking water samples, with RSD of 0.1%-24% (n=3). The D-HS with automatic water pretreatment was applied to simultaneously measure dozens of VOCs in water samples with high efficiency. Compared with the widely applicable purge-and-trap method, the purge needle of D-HS does not contact with the aqueous sample, therefore, the contaminations from sample to instrument is avoided while using D-HS. D-HS, a labor saving method, is suitable for detecting dozens of VOCs in drinking source water.