Steam-Modified-Gas-Solid- Chromatography: A Complementary Technique for Organic Pollutant Survey

Abstract

Water or atmospheric organic pollution analyses require tedious pretreatment procedures which sometimes may alter the quantitative composition of the sample. The steam-modified-gas-solid-chromatography technique, which combines a composite mobile phase of carrier gas plus steam and a physical parameter of the column packing like the specific surface area, appears as a very powerful tool for solving the aqueous sample analyses. The direct injections of aqueous samples suppress any pretreatment procedures and allow trace detection within the ppb to ppm level. Some examples show the potentialities of such a technique.