Development of a SPME-GC Method for the Determination of Organic Compounds in Wastewater

A manual SPME method is presented for the analysis of organic compounds in industrial wastewater. 24 compounds commonly found in the wastewater of a chemical plant in northern Germany have been selected as reference compounds. Precision, linearity, and detection limits have been determined. Moreover, the effect of methanol content, pH value, salt content, and an excess of compounds on the extraction process have been studied. Several compounds have been investigated for their applicability as internal standards to quantify the compounds of interest. Since the method will later be transferred to a fully automated SPME-GC system, which will be operated directly on-site at an industrial wastewater purification plant, special attention has been paid to the analysis of real wastewater samples. In this context, the fibre stability has been studied by performing 53 extraction/desorption cycles from one wastewater sample. Neither a decrease in fibre performance nor in precision has been observed indicating that the proposed method is suitable for the analysis of real wastewater.