Introduction
Environmental agencies regularly monitor watercourses and coastal waters for the presence of a variety of compound classes, to ensure that any releases from industry are within acceptable limits. To reduce the risk of fines (or even site closure), manual spot-checks have commonly been used by companies to monitor their own releases, but the lowering of limit levels means that these are no longer adequate, and run the risk of missing pollution events.
This has increased the need for fully automated, continuous monitoring at multiple monitoring points, employing robust sampling and quantitation procedures, and in-field analysis by non-specialists. If detected, any sources of contamination must also be localised, which requires robust mass-spectrometric identification of unknowns and/or emerging contaminants. In this study, we employ a flow-through cell for on-line effluent sampling, in conjunction with robotic tool change for time-efficient sampling, standard addition and headspace analysis on a single, fully-automated platform. The use of GC–FID for analysis enables remote, continuous monitoring for rapid response to contamination events, while GC–TOF MS provides confirmatory analysis and identification of unknowns or compounds of emerging concern.
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