Trace Studies of Alcohols in the Plasma Chromatograph--Mass Spectrometer

Plasma Chromatography™ permits identification and analysis of trace constituents in gaseous mixtures. Functioning at atmospheric pressure, the instrumentation involves a positive and negative ion-molecule reactor coupled with an ion drift spectrometer, which produces a plasmagram of separated ion-molecule peaks from a sample mixture. Individual peaks of the plasmagram can be directed into a quadrupole mass spectrometer to identify the ion-molecules present. This study explored the trace detection of the oxygenated compounds 1-octanol and 1-nonanol as revealed by their positive and negative plasmagrams and mass spectra of the ion-molecule clusters shown in the plasmagrams. The positive ion plasmagrams and mass spectra originated from a series of ion-molecule clusters represented by (CnH2n+2O)x(H2O)yH#x02B;O. The negative ion results showed a reactant ion corresponding to (CO2)O2− and resultant ion-molecule clusters of the single species (CnH2n+2O)O2−, which were well separated in the plasmagrams.