Performance evaluation of a thermal desorption/gas chromatographic/mass spectrometric method for the characterization of waste tank headspace samples

A thermal desorption/gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TD/GC/MS) method was validated for the determination of volatile organic compounds collected on carbonaceous triple sorbent traps and applied to characterize samples of headspace gases collected from underground nuclear waste storage tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford site, in Richland, WA. Method validation used vapor-phase standards generated from 25 target analytes, including alkanes, alkyl alcohols, alkyl ketones, alkylated aromatics, and alkyl nitriles. The target analytes represent a group of compounds identified in one of the most problematic tanks. TD/GC/MS was carried out with modified injectors. Performance was characterized based on desorption efficiency, reproducibility, stability, and linearity of the calibration, method detection limits, preanalytical holding time, and quality control limits for surrogate standard recoveries. Desorption efficiencies were all greater than 82%, and the majority of the analytes (23 out of 25) had reproducibility values less than 24% near the method detection levels. The method was applied to the analysis of a total of 305 samples collected from the headspaces of 48 underground waste storge tanks. Quality control procedures were implemented to monitor sampling and TD/GC/MS method. 33 refs., 2 figs., 4 tabs