Joint quantification of PAH and oxy-PAH from standard reference materials (urban dust and diesel particulate matter) and diesel soot surrogate by GC-MS

ABSTRACT

The combustion of fossil fuels produces pollutants such as soot, which consists of carbonaceous particles whose emission is regulated by environmental laws. Soot is mainly formed from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), through different reaction ways and, once formed, it can adsorb PAH on its surface. These compounds have an environmental importance due to their carcinogenic and mutagenic potential. In the last years, the oxygenated derivatives of PAH (oxy-PAH) have also been considered as dangerous since they have been found to be mutagenic for bacterial and human cells. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to quantify simultaneously selected PAH and oxy-PAH from different samples of soot. The quantification method involves Soxhlet extraction and subsequent concentration by rotary evaporation that allows to recover the analysed compounds from soot samples. The PAH and oxy-PAH were identified and quantified, by a single injection, using a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS). The method showed a good repeatability using a diesel soot surrogate test sample, Printex-U. The validation process showed that most of the compounds are recovered between the values established for the Standard Reference Materials analysed, 1650b and 1649b. The values of the mass fraction of the oxy-PAH obtained in this work showed, in general, a good match with those indicated in other studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)
• oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (oxy-PAH)
• gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS)
• Standard Reference Materials (SRM)
• diesel
• soxhlet extraction

Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to Aragon Government (Ref. T22_17R) co-funded by FEDER 2014-2020 ‘Construyendo Europa desde Aragón’ and to MINECO and FEDER (Project CTQ2015-65226), for financial support. Dr. F. Viteri acknowledges to the ‘Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación’ (SENESCYT) of Ecuador, for the predoctoral grant awarded.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund [Project CTQ2015-65226];Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [Project CTQ2015-65226];Aragon Government co-funded by FEDER 2014-2020 ‘Construyendo Europa desde Aragón’ [T22_17R].