Determination of 2-methylisoborneol and geosmin in drinking water by purge and trap-GC-MS/MS

Objective To develope a purge and trap-gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry(GC-MS/MS) method for determination of 2-methylisoborneol and geosmin in drinking water.

Methods After 5 mL water sample was purged with high purity nitrogen carrier gas at a flow rate of 40 mL/min for 11 min, the residue is thermally desorbed and analyzed by GC-MS/MS. The 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine was used as the internal standard for quantification Result Under the optimized experimental conditions, the linearity of 2-methylisobornol and geosmin in the concentration range of 5.0 ng/L~100 ng/L was good, with a correlation coefficient of 0.999 6 and 0.999 8, respectively. The limits of detection (LODs, S/N=3) were 0.13 ng/L for 2-methylisoborneol and 0.06 ng/L for geosmin. The recoveries ranged from 92.3% to 104.5%, and the relative standard deviations ranged 1.89% to 4.07%.

Conclusion The method is simple, rapid, accurate, and sensitive. It can be applied for the determination of 2-methylisobcamol and geosmin in drinking water.