EPA 8270 by SPE

[eric3]

My company is looking at replacing sepratory funnel extractions with SPE. This would involve methods EPA608,625,8081,8082, and 8270. Does anyone have experience with Horizon Technology's automated sample prep system? Pros and Cons? Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Eric

[tlahren]

I have never used SPE for 8270 but I did look into the Horizon system in the past to replace the liquid/liquid method. One thing you have to be aware of is that certain analytes suffer extreme recovery losses (I believe the acid extractables) and thus Horizon offers a secondary recovery cartrige for this purpose. From what I read it works great for most BNA compounds with out any other modifications. I'm not sure though if a pH adjustment is still needed or not and if so, how to recover the sample to process it a second time (as in the L/L 8270 method). In our case we decided that we didn't get enough liquid samples to warrant buying any addtional equipment. We were also having trouble setting up our oil and grease method on SPE. It turned out that it wasn't so straight forward and some times we would have very poor standard recoveries. I would make sure that the benefits will eventualy out-weigh the costs of implementing the SPE system for full-list 8270 (i.e., not just using it for 10 samples a week). My guess is that there will be a lot of method development and downtime initially until you can get a rock solid SOP developed for it.

My 2 cents.