Trace Level Determination of Saccharides in Pristine Marine Aerosols by Gas Chromatography—Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The quantification and identification of saccharides in pristine marine aerosols can provide useful information for determining the contributions of anthropogenic and natural sources of the aerosol. However, individual saccharide compounds in pristine marine aerosols that exist in trace amounts are difficult to analyze due to their low concentrations. Thus, in this study, we applied gas chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode to analyze the particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter equal or less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) samples, and the results were compared with those of conventional GC-MS. To investigate the chemical properties of pristine marine aerosols, 12 PM2.5 samples were collected while aboard Araon, an ice-breaking research vessel (IBRV), as it sailed from Incheon, South Korea to Antarctica. The method detection limits of GC-MS/MS for 10 saccharides were 2–22-fold lower than those of GC-MS. Consequently, the advantages of GC-MS/MS include (1) more distinct peak separations, enabling the accurate identification of the target saccharides and (2) the quantification of all individual saccharide compounds with concentrations outside the quantifiable range of GC-MS. Accordingly, the time resolution for sampling saccharides in pristine marine aerosols can be improved with GC-MS/MS.

Research of saccharides and related biocomplexes: A review with recent techniques and applications

“…GC-MS is used for monitoring monosaccharides [45,69,203] which need always derivatization (Table S2, [51,76,118,202,[205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212][213][214][215][216][217][218][219]). TFAA [118] and TMS [75] derivatization methods are simple to use and the chemicals are effective for a wide range of saccharides.…”

“…For this reason, applications of industrial wood wastes have increased dramatically. Better utilization of wood waste was shown to improve the production of monosaccharides, polysaccharides, and saccharide metabolites [30,43,201,207,284]. However, the purification of individual saccharides needs large-scale isolation processes Saccharides of aerosols hold valuable information about the sources of organic carbons and their drift, which have implications for human health [32,192,213,214,218,[308][309][310][311][312].…”

“…For this reason, applications of industrial wood wastes have increased dramatically. Better utilization of wood waste was shown to improve the production of monosaccharides, polysaccharides, and saccharide metabolites [30, 43, 201, 207, 284]. However, the purification of individual saccharides needs large‐scale isolation processes…”