Assessment of the trace organic molecular composition of industrial and municipal wastewater effluents by capillary gas chromatography/real-time high-resolution mass spectrometry: a preliminary report.

In summary, the use of HRGC/HRMS and ECC can provide valuable information on the organic constituents of refinery wastewater samples, even when present in extremely complex mixtures. In many cases, the low-resolution (nominal mass) spectra would not have been interpretable without the availability of the corresponding high-resolution (accurate mass and elemental composition) information, since, even with the use of capillary columns, the components of these complex mixtures were not chromatographically resolved. It is apparent that additional components in these fractions could be identified if additional data processing followed by detailed analysis of the ECC data set is carried out incorporating the retention index information derivable from the series of n-alkanes present, although the incomplete chemical fractionation of the samples is a complicating factor in these particular wastewater extracts.