Comprehensive analysis of sulfur-containing compounds in tobacco smoke by using new separation and analytical techniques
Sulfur-containing compounds in food have been extensively studied because of their effect on aroma and taste. It is well known that sulfur compounds in complex matrices, such as tobacco smoke, are difficult to analyse. Sulfur compounds are typically present at very low concentrations and in GC-MS analysis they co-elute with other analytes from the tobacco smoke matrix. Therefore the required chromatographic resolution is much higher than conventional 1D GC can provide.
In this presentation, a FEDHS-TD-GC-selectable 2D/3D GC-SCD/MS approach will be demonstrated for comprehensive analysis of sulfur compounds in tobacco smoke. For sample introduction, a specific dynamic headspace technique called Full Evaporation Dynamic Headspace (FEDHS) was applied in order to obtain high sensitivity, similar to large volume injection, while sample matrix effects are minimised. After conventional separation in a pre-column, fractions can be further analysed on a second and third dimension column. The selectable 2D/3D GC with selective sulfur detection using a sulfur chemoluminescence detector (SCD) is based on capillary flow technology and low thermal mass GC (LTM-GC). The main advantages of this system are simple and fast selection of 2D GC-MS or 3D GC-MS without any instrument set-up change.
After analysis of tobacco smoke, identification of each peak on SCD chromatograms was done by Aroma Office 2D software (GERSTEL) that provides highly accurate searches through the use of retention indices and database of over 70000 entities.
By using this system, we could isolate and detect over 450 sulfur-containing compounds on 2D SCD chromatograms and identify 18 unique compounds.