Determination of extractable organic chlorine by electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

Abstract

Extractable organic chlorine (EOCI) is a sum parameter used to describe the organic chlorine concentration in solid or liquid samples that can produce injurious effects on health. In this work, a new method is presented for the determination EOCI. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is not especially suitable for the determination of chlorine owing to the high ionization energy of chlorine. However, when electrothermal vaporization (ETV) is compared with ICP-MS, the sensitivity is high enough to facilitate sum parameter analysis from limited sample volumes. Ethyl acetate has been used as an extraction solvent. Chlorine was determined by collecting data during heating by monitoring m/z 35 using the single-ion monitoring mode. The detection limit for EOCl by ETV-ICP-MS is approximately 10 ng.