Abstract
The selective determination of trimethylamine (TMA) in air by liquid chromatography is reported. Sampling is effected by flushing air through C 18-packed solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges at a flow rate of 15 mL/min for 15 min. Next, TMA is desorbed from the cartridges and injected into the chromatographic system. The analyte is then selectively retained on a precolumn ( 20 mm×2.1 mm i.d., packed with 30 μm, Hypersil C 18 phase), and derivatized on-line by injecting 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC). Finally, the TMA-FMOC derivative is transferred to the analytical column ( 125 mm×4 mm i.d., LiChrospher 100 RP 18, 5 μm), and monitored at 262 nm. The method was applied to the measurement of TMA in air in the 0.25–2.5 μg interval (equivalent to concentrations of TMA of 1.1–11 mg/m 3), providing good linearity, reproducibility and accuracy. The mean recovery of TMA was (96±7%) ( n=12), and the limit of detection was 0.05 μg. The proposed procedure allows the selective determination of TMA in the presence of other primary and secondary short-chain aliphatic amines.
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