Orthogonal Design Study on Factors Affecting the Determination of Common Odors in Water Samples by Headspace Solid-Phase Microextraction Coupled to GC/MS

Geosmin and 2-MIB are responsible for the majority of earthy and musty events related to the drinking water. These two odorants have extremely low odor threshold concentrations at ng L(−1) level in the water, so a simple and sensitive method for the analysis of such trace levels was developed by headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. In this study, the orthogonal experiment design L(32) (4(9)) was applied to arrange and optimize experimental conditions. The optimum was the following: temperatures of extraction and desorption, 65°C and 260°C, respectively; times of extraction and desorption, 30 min and 5 min, respectively; ionic strength, 25% (w/v); rotate-speed, 600 rpm; solution pH, 5.0. Under the optimized conditions, limits of detection (S/N = 3) were 0.04 and 0.13 ng L(−1) for geosmin and 2-MIB, respectively. Calculated calibration curves gave high levels of linearity with a correlation coefficient value of 0.9999 for them. Finally, the proposed method was applied to water samples, which were previously analyzed and confirmed to be free of target analytes. Besides, the proposal method was applied to test environmental water samples. The RSDs were 2.75%~3.80% and 4.35%~7.6% for geosmin and 2-MIB, respectively, and the recoveries were 91%~107% and 91%~104% for geosmin and 2-MIB, respectively.