Hand-portable HPLC with broadband spectral detection enables analysis of complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures

Stelios Chatzimichail; Faraz Rahimi; Aliyah Saifuddin; Andrew J. Surman; Simon D. Taylor-Robinson; Ali Salehi-Reyhani

doi:10.1038/s42004-021-00457-7

Hand-portable HPLC with broadband spectral detection enables analysis of complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures

Stelios Chatzimichail, Faraz Rahimi, Aliyah Saifuddin, Andrew J. Surman, Simon D. Taylor-Robinson, Ali Salehi-Reyhani^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are considered priority hazardous substances due to their carcinogenic activity and risk to public health. Strict regulations are in place limiting their release into the environment, but enforcement is hampered by a lack of adequate field-testing procedure, instead relying on sending samples to centralised analytical facilities. Reliably monitoring levels of PAHs in the field is a challenge, owing to the lack of field-deployable analytical methods able to separate, identify, and quantify the complex mixtures in which PAHs are typically observed. Here, we report the development of a hand-portable system based on high-performance liquid chromatography incorporating a spectrally wide absorption detector, capable of fingerprinting PAHs based on their characteristic spectral absorption profiles: identifying 100% of the 24 PAHs tested, including full coverage of the United States Environmental Protection Agency priority pollutant list. We report unsupervised methods to exploit these new capabilities for feature detection and identification, robust enough to detect and classify co-eluting and hidden peaks. Identification is fully independent of their characteristic retention times, mitigating matrix effects which can preclude reliable determination of these analytes in challenging samples. We anticipate the platform to enable more sophisticated analytical measurements, supporting real-time decision making in the field.

Original language	English
Article number	17
Journal	Communications Chemistry
Volume	4
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-021-00457-7
Publication status	Published - Dec 2021

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title = "Hand-portable HPLC with broadband spectral detection enables analysis of complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures",

abstract = "Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are considered priority hazardous substances due to their carcinogenic activity and risk to public health. Strict regulations are in place limiting their release into the environment, but enforcement is hampered by a lack of adequate field-testing procedure, instead relying on sending samples to centralised analytical facilities. Reliably monitoring levels of PAHs in the field is a challenge, owing to the lack of field-deployable analytical methods able to separate, identify, and quantify the complex mixtures in which PAHs are typically observed. Here, we report the development of a hand-portable system based on high-performance liquid chromatography incorporating a spectrally wide absorption detector, capable of fingerprinting PAHs based on their characteristic spectral absorption profiles: identifying 100% of the 24 PAHs tested, including full coverage of the United States Environmental Protection Agency priority pollutant list. We report unsupervised methods to exploit these new capabilities for feature detection and identification, robust enough to detect and classify co-eluting and hidden peaks. Identification is fully independent of their characteristic retention times, mitigating matrix effects which can preclude reliable determination of these analytes in challenging samples. We anticipate the platform to enable more sophisticated analytical measurements, supporting real-time decision making in the field.",

author = "Stelios Chatzimichail and Faraz Rahimi and Aliyah Saifuddin and Surman, {Andrew J.} and Taylor-Robinson, {Simon D.} and Ali Salehi-Reyhani",

note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) through a fellowship and a Community for Analytical Measurements Science UK lectureship award to ASR. SDTR was supported by a Wellcome Trust ISSF grant at Imperial College London. All authors are grateful to the NIHR Biomedical Facility at Imperial College London for infrastructure support. We thank Dr Christopher Benton and Agilent UK for their technical support. We also thank Ms Katia Grira and the King{\textquoteright}s College London Department of Chemistry Mass Spectrometry Facility for the PAH LC-MS sample runs. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",

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AU - Taylor-Robinson, Simon D.

AU - Salehi-Reyhani, Ali

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) through a fellowship and a Community for Analytical Measurements Science UK lectureship award to ASR. SDTR was supported by a Wellcome Trust ISSF grant at Imperial College London. All authors are grateful to the NIHR Biomedical Facility at Imperial College London for infrastructure support. We thank Dr Christopher Benton and Agilent UK for their technical support. We also thank Ms Katia Grira and the King’s College London Department of Chemistry Mass Spectrometry Facility for the PAH LC-MS sample runs. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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N2 - Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are considered priority hazardous substances due to their carcinogenic activity and risk to public health. Strict regulations are in place limiting their release into the environment, but enforcement is hampered by a lack of adequate field-testing procedure, instead relying on sending samples to centralised analytical facilities. Reliably monitoring levels of PAHs in the field is a challenge, owing to the lack of field-deployable analytical methods able to separate, identify, and quantify the complex mixtures in which PAHs are typically observed. Here, we report the development of a hand-portable system based on high-performance liquid chromatography incorporating a spectrally wide absorption detector, capable of fingerprinting PAHs based on their characteristic spectral absorption profiles: identifying 100% of the 24 PAHs tested, including full coverage of the United States Environmental Protection Agency priority pollutant list. We report unsupervised methods to exploit these new capabilities for feature detection and identification, robust enough to detect and classify co-eluting and hidden peaks. Identification is fully independent of their characteristic retention times, mitigating matrix effects which can preclude reliable determination of these analytes in challenging samples. We anticipate the platform to enable more sophisticated analytical measurements, supporting real-time decision making in the field.

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Hand-portable HPLC with broadband spectral detection enables analysis of complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures

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