Chromatography Forum

Does anyone have any experience testing for Furans (Furfurol, 2-Furaldehyde, HydroxyMethylFuraldehyde, 2-Acetyl Furan, and 5-Methyl-2-Furaldehyde ) in mineral oil by GC/MS? I currently conduct this test routinely using HPLC/UV by extracting the Furans with Methanol and injecting this directly on an LC. The problem is that we routinely have co-extractive peaks leading to false positives or increased MDLs.

I wonder if headspace extraction followed by GC/MS would work and meet my MDL requirements (10 ppb each furan).

Thanks,

Mark Dalmaijer
Manitoba Hydro

They're likely to be quite soluble in the mineral oil and thus won't want to partition into the headspace to any great extent. The 10 ppb could be tough. I'm pretty positive that static headspace is not going to work for you. Perhaps the lack of analyte in the headspace at equilibrium could be offset by using solid-phase microextraction and detection improved using SIM in your MS. I have used this technique to determine aldehydes in epoxidized vegetable oils and I was able to get pretty low concentrations.

Is it easy to separate these furans from other components in the mineral oil?

Use carboxen-pdms or carbowax spme fiber to adsorb the target molecules out of headspace. I'd suppose mineral oil you have is way less volatile than targets. You should be able to see them in mid ppb.