Abstract
After the incident on the Deepwater Horizon platform, around 1.8 million gallons of dispersants were used in the field as part of the response cleanup efforts. This study describes an online solid phase extraction–liquid chromatography (LC)–tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) method and a direct-injection LC-MS/MS method for the analysis of dioctyl sulfosuccinate (DOSS; a component in Corexit® EC9500A) in seawater at trace levels, with method detection limits (MDLs) of 7.0 and 440 ng/L and run times of 7 and 17 min, respectively. Stability and preservation studies demonstrated that samples at 4.7 μg/L could be preserved for up to 150 days without loss of analyte when stored with 33 % acetonitrile in glass containers. Data acquisition was performed by heated electrospray ionization (ESI) MS/MS operating in negative mode. Methods were validated in terms of percent recovery in fortified blank and matrix samples and to evaluate carryover. A simple modification of the direct-injection method allowed quantitation of 2-butoxyethanol, a dispersant component specific to the Corexit® EC9527A formulation. This method was used to simultaneously quantify DOSS and 2-butoxyethanol in two Corexit® formulations and extracts from an MC-252 source oil standard. MDLs in crude oil were 0.723 and 4.46 mg/kg, respectively, with recoveries of (92 ± 9)% for DOSS and (104 ± 8)% for 2-butoxyethanol. Detection of both indicators was achieved in a single chromatographic run by ESI-MS/MS operating sequentially in positive and negative mode. Corexit® EC9500A and Corexit® EC9527A were found to contain (21 ± 2)% and (22 ± 5)% w/w DOSS and 0 and (37 ± 2)% w/w 2-butoxyethanol, respectively.
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Acknowledgments
The Environmental Analysis Research Laboratory acknowledges the support from Thermo Scientific in the development of this work. The MC-252 oil sample (Enterprise 5/22, SOB-20100622-084) was provided by the University of South Florida through the Oil Spill Academic Task Force. We thank Rebecca Vega-Thurber at Florida International University for providing samples of NALCO’s Corexit® EC9500A and Corexit® EC9527A. S.R.B. thanks the Florida International University graduate school for supporting her through a Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship. This is contribution number 602 from the Southeast Environmental Research Center at Florida International University.
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Ramirez, C.E., Batchu, S.R. & Gardinali, P.R. High sensitivity liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometric methods for the analysis of dioctyl sulfosuccinate in different stages of an oil spill response monitoring effort. Anal Bioanal Chem 405, 4167–4175 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-013-6841-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-013-6841-1