Estimation of recovery by multistep purge-and-trap gas chromatographic–mass spectrometric analysis of honey volatiles

Calculation of volatile recovery in dynamic headspace techniques such as purge-and-trap (P&T) usually requires a calibration with standard compounds. When these are not available, application of mathematical models to the results obtained by multistep fractionation of a sample can be used for the estimation of recovery. A comparison of the fit quality of quantitative data (GC peak areas) using different calculation procedures and of the results of recovery estimation is presented for different honey volatiles. While models M1–M3 and M5 proposed in this paper correctly describe multistep experimental data for most honey compounds, other volatiles present a recovery behaviour which requires an additional parameter to be considered (models M4 and M6). For the last compounds, recovery is variable along the multistep procedure and the total amount cannot be accurately estimated by the use of multistep P&T fractionation.