Needle concentrator for gas chromatographic determination of BTEX in aqueous samples

A simple method of solventless extraction of volatile organic compounds (BTEX) from aqueous samples was developed and validated. A new arrangement of the full volume inside needle capillary adsorption trap (INCAT) device with Porapak Q as a sorbent material and wet alumina as a source of desorptive water vapour flow in a closed analytical system is presented. The analytical characteristics of developed device and of compared purge-and-trap (PTI) device for BTEX compounds are similar; the limits of detection as well as quantification are lower than 1 μg l−1.