Chromatography Forum

My lab does EPA method 8270/625.1 on industrial wastes. I need to create a cleanup method to generally remove junk from the extracts and recover the various different classes of target compounds (PAHs, Phenolics, Nitroamines, Organochlorines).

I was thinking of using silica gel and just washing the extract with a low, mid and high polarity solvent or solvent mix. Anyone has any experience with doing this?

When I use silica gel for cleanups, I would exchange the DCM extract into a more nonpolar solvent like hexane. It might be worth playing around with the parameters in the tables at the bottom of 3630c. I haven't done it for the full list, so I don't know how more polar analytes would hold up.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files ... /3630c.pdf