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Development of an air‐flow‐assisted extractive electrospray ionization source for rapid analysis of phthalic acid esters in spirits
Author(s) -
Sun Jiufeng,
Wang Wentian,
Xu Li,
Dong Junguo,
Gao Wei,
Huang Zhengxu,
Cheng Ping,
Zhou Zhen
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.7268
Subject(s) - chemistry , phthalic acid , mass spectrometry , chromatography , detection limit , phthalate , electrospray ionization , diethyl phthalate , atmospheric pressure chemical ionization , dart ion source , extractive electrospray ionization , desorption electrospray ionization , electrospray , dibutyl phthalate , flow injection analysis , analytical chemistry (journal) , atmospheric pressure , gas chromatography , reproducibility , direct electron ionization liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry interface , ionization , chemical ionization , electron ionization , sample preparation in mass spectrometry , organic chemistry , ion , oceanography , geology
Rationale Although traditional analytical techniques like gas chromatography (GC) and GC/mass spectrometry (MS) offer satisfactory sensitivity and good reproducibility for the detection of phthalic acid esters (PAEs) in a variety of matrices, they involve laborious sample pretreatment, are time‐consuming, and some are expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Furthermore, there are thousands of spirits on the market; therefore, rapid and high‐throughout methods suitable for the consistent detection and quantification of PAEs in spirits are urgently required. Methods A new atmospheric pressure ionization method, named air‐flow‐assisted extractive electrospray ionization (EESI), has been developed. It is a variant on EESI and possesses the advantages of both EESI and air‐flow‐assisted ionization for direct analysis of samples without pretreatment. Combined with a quadrupole time‐of‐flight (QTOF) mass spectrometer, the method was used to directly analyze four PAEs, i.e., dipentyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, benzyl butyl phthalate and didecyl phthalate, in spirits. Results The method exhibits excellent sensitivity, stability and convenience. Four different brands of spirits have been successfully analyzed. The total analysis time for one sample was within 1 min, and the limits of detection and limits of quantification of the samples are located in the range 0.011–0.035 and 0.038–0.087 µg g –1 , respectively. Very good linearities, with correlation coefficients of 0.9758–0.9990, are observed for the samples in the range of 0.035 to 10 µg g –1 . Conclusions The results indicate that the air‐flow‐assisted EESI combined with tandem mass spectrometry is an effective method for rapid and direct determination of PAEs in spirits without sample pretreatment. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.