A catalogue of urban hydrocarbons for the city of Leeds: atmospheric monitoring of volatile organic compounds by thermal desorption-gas chromatography

Abstract

A method has been developed for the speciation and quantitative determination of hydrocarbons in urban air in the city of Leeds. Hydrocarbons were pre-concentrated by adsorbent tube air sampling and analysed using thermal desorption and gas chromatography with flame ionization detection and structural confirmation by mass spectrometric detection. While automated volatile organic compound (VOC) analysers produced data for a maximum of about 30 compounds simultaneously, with the method described here, a total of 68 C ₆ -C ₁₂ hydrocarbons were measured simultaneously in one analysis at parts per billion (ppb) levels. Several monitoring surveys were performed, one during the winter of 1993 and the other in the summer of 1994, at a number of sites to investigate the levels of VOCs identified in the urban air of Leeds.