Application of needle trap device packed with Amberlite XAD-2 resin prepared by sol-gel method for reproducible sampling of aromatic amines in air

Abstract

This paper introduces an active needle trap device (NTD) coupled with gas chromatography-flame ionization detector for sampling and analysis of aromatic amines in air. For this purpose, Amberlite sorbent was prepared using sol-gel method to improve its active surface area and sorption characteristics. The synthesized adsorbent was packed inside a stainless steel needle as NTD. The synthesized adsorbent properties were investigated using scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The efficiency of the proposed NTD was investigated under various sampling and desorption conditions. In this way, a constant concentration of the compounds of interest was injected into a dynamic standard chamber, and then the proposed NTD was used for the sampling of the amine compounds under the determined conditions. The highest responses of the compounds were obtained at 280 °C of desorption temperature and 3 min of desorption time. The mean storage recoveries of the Amberlite/silica packed NTD were in the range 93–99.3%, after 7 days of sampling. The sampler offered high sensitivity for sampling and analysis of the compounds of interest. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantification (LOQs) for the studied analytes were in the range 0.01–0.02 ng mL−1 and 0.05–0.08 ng mL−1, respectively. The repeatability and reproducibility of the proposed NTD were in the range 2.61–15.32 and 0.60–12.15, respectively. Moreover, the proposed method offered a good storage capability in comparison to the NIOSH standard method.