Test on the reliability of gastight syringes as transfer/storage media for gaseous VOC analysis: The extent of VOC sorption between the inner needle and a glass wall surface

A gastight syringe (GTS) is commonly used as a medium for transfer or storage of gaseous standards (or samples) in the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this study, the sorptive loss patterns of 21 VOCs were examined, using GTS as the transfer medium. The results of the test were evaluated with respect to a number of key variables including concentration, sampling volume, and physicochemical properties (molecular weight and boiling point). The VOCs with relatively high volatility (Group 1: aldehyde, ketone, ester, alcohol, and aromatic hydrocarbons (n = 12)) showed low sorptive losses with a mean (±SD) of 2.56 ± 2.87%, regardless of differences in the aforementioned key variables (p-value by t-test before and after using GTS = mean 0.15 ± 0.13). Conversely, the sorptive losses of seven semi-VOCs (Group 2: carboxyl and cresol (n = 9)) were significantly high, ranging from 18.0 ± 4.10% (propionic acid) to 65.4 ± 10.9% (n-heptanonic acid). In addition, we also measured the sorptive losses on the syringe needle (mean sorptive loss of Group 2 = 5.94 ± 5.63%). A linear regression analysis showed that the sorptive losses for Group 2 increased as molecular weight (or boiling point) increased, exhibiting a highly significant correlation (R² value (0.804 ± 0.084) and mean p-value (0.002 ± 0.003).