Simultaneous determination of ethylbenzene, indan, indene and acenaphthene in air by capillary gas chromatography

An attempt was made to establish a method for the simultaneous determination of ethylbenzene, indan, indene and acenaphthene by capillary gas chromatography with flame ionization detection. The air was sampled on charcoal tubes and extracted with carbon disulfide–methanol (60:1, v/v). The four analytes were separated by gas chromatography using a capillary column of cross-linked 5% phenylmethylsilicone. Under the applied conditions the method showed detection limits of 1.8 μg/m3 for ethylbenzene, 2.1 μg/m3 for indan, 2.8 μg/m3 for indene and 3.4 μg/m3 for acenaphthene. Relative standard deviations were as follows: ethylbenzene, 6.2%; indan, 9.9%; indene, 13.6%; and acenaphthene, 14.4%. The recoveries for these compounds were 98.6, 97.9, 55.7 and 52.1%, and the accuracies were 2.5, 3.0, 44.3 and 47.8%, a working range of 1.5–30 ng/μl for ethylbenzene and 0.75–15 ng/μl for indan, indene and acenaphthene. The method was found to be suitable for the determination of environmental and occupational analysed ethylbenzene, indan, indene and acenaphthene exposure.