Methodology for non-target screening of sewage sludge using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry

To investigate the wide range of pollutants occurring in sewage sludge, an analytical method for comprehensive non-target screening is needed. To the best of our knowledge, no procedures currently exist for the full screening of organic contaminants in sewage sludge, which is the ultimate goal of this project. We developed non-discriminating sample preparation methods for gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) was used for extraction, with in-line (silica gel selective PLE, SPLE) or off-line clean-up (gel permeation chromatography, GPC). This combination allowed the analysis of non-polar compounds of all sizes and small semi-polar and non-polar compounds. The results show that the combination of SPLE and PLE with GPC is suitable for analysis of established as well as new contaminants. Both methods were validated for 99 compounds with different properties. For all GC suitable analytes, either one of the methods produced acceptable recoveries (64 to 136%). As a test, the two methods were used for non-target screening of Swedish sewage sludge. A tiered approach was used to tentatively identify the sludge contaminants. In total, 1865 and 1593 compounds were found of which 321 and 192 compounds were tentatively identified for the PLE and SPLE method, respectively. For a comprehensive coverage of contaminants, the two methods should be used together, with the PLE method covering a wider polarity range and the SPLE method a wider size range. In addition, polar substances will require liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis, the method for which will be developed soon. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00216-017-0429-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.