Dual low thermal mass gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for fast dual-column separation of pesticides in complex sample

A method is described for fast dual-column separation of pesticides by use of dual low thermal mass gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (dual LTM-GC–MS) with different temperature programming. The method can provide two total ion chromatograms with different separation on DB-5 and DB-17 in a single run, which allows improved identification capability, even with short analysis time (<17 min). Also simultaneous detection with MS and elemental selective detector, e.g. pulsed flame photometric detection (PFPD) was evaluated for fast dual-column separation of 82 pesticide mixtures including 27 phosphorus pesticides. Dual LTM-GC–MS/PFPD was applied to analysis of pesticides in a brewed green tea sample with dual stir bar sorptive extraction method (dual SBSE).