Development of automated column chromatography system and its application to the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in suspended particulate matter

An automated column chromatography system has been developed in order to achieve a clean-up procedure for the determination of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons more conveniently. The system can hold 8 solid-phase extraction columns, and the elution volume of solvents can be controlled in 1 μL of resolution. The recovery of PAHs obtained by using the automated chromatography system matched with that using the manual chromatography procedure. The high-temperature Soxhlet extraction/automated column chromatography/HPLC/fluorescence detection method developed in this study has been applied to the determination of PAHs in aerosol collected in Beijing, China. ΣPAHs, which is the sum of the concentrations of Japanese Source PAHs measured in this study, were 198.5 ± 149.8 ng m ^-3 (n=24) in the heating season, and 50.1 ± 63.7 ng m ^-3 (n=1) in the non-heating season. The strong seasonal variation is probably due to coal combustion for residential heating in winter season.