GCMS for soil samples for determining Nitrous Oxide

[dbussan]

Beginner here to GCMS so please take it easy on me. I was wondering if anyone knows a good method for determining Nitrous Oxide in soil maybe using headspace vials. The reason why I put that in is the GCMS that we have can analyze samples via headspace and it seems like it would be a quick and easy way if alls one would have to do is put the soil sample in a vial, crimp it, incubate it and then see if there is any Nitrous Oxide. Maybe it won't be this easy either. Thanks. Its a 2008 thermo fisher ICQ 1100 with all the bells and whistles.

[Don_Hilton]

A paper that I hit with a google search suggests that you may be looking in the right direction ( http://www.boku.ac.at/diebodenkultur/vo ... nstern.pdf ) This work used ECD for the detector. You may not have the sensitivity with the MSD that you can get from the ECD - but the sensitivity you need depends on your samples.

With the head spcace sampling you need to be able to transfer sufficient sample to the GC inlet. Note the volume used in the sampling loop.

USDA has doen some work in which they have taken some air samples above soil and analyzed them. Looking a the pictures in a slide presentation, it looks like they have used headspace vials. Here is the link - and I'll let you do some searching to see if you can find out any more information on what USDA is doing: ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/AIR/AAQTF ... tfield.pdf