Purge-and-trap injection capillary gas chromatographic determination of volatile aromatic hydrocarbons in river sediment

Dynamic headspace and purge-and-trap with methanolic extraction techniques for the simple and rapid determination of trace amounts of volatile aromatic hydrocarbons in river sediments were compared. The purge-and-trap technique with methanolic extraction using an external standard method gives a better representativeness of the analysed sample, a twofold higher precision and twofold lower detection limits. When the internal standard method is applied, the precision of both methods increases 3–4 times and the detection limits decrease 4–5 times.