Characterization of polar polycyclic aromatic compounds in a heavy-duty diesel exhaust particulate by capillary column gas chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry

Polar normal-phase HPLC fractions of a heavy-duty diesel exhaust particulate, a National Bureau of Standards (NBS) standard reference material (SRM) 1650, were analyzed by capillary column GC coupled to both low- and high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) using electron impact (EI) and negative ion chemical ionization (NICI). Over 80 polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC), belonging to many different chemical classes (anhydrides, carboxaldehydes, diazaarenes cyclic imides, nitrohydroxy-PAC, nitroaza-PAC, nitrodiaza-PAC, nitrolactones, and quinones) were tentatively identified. Ten of them were positively identified by comparison of retention times with authentic standards.