Development of an LCMS Analytical Method with Applicability to Determination of Trace Level Explosives in Environmental Waters
type: CreativeWork
description: Traces of explosives and their degradation products present in explosives contaminated sites from military sources, such as training facilities, impose a great concern over the public health and our eco-system. This work is centered around finding an efficient way to extraction of these chemicals from water samples and their analysis using advanced separation technology: LC-MS/MS Shimadzu Prominence 8050 and AB Sciex Trap 4000 LC-MS/MS. Different extraction methods will be proposed, along with chromatographic and mass spectroscopy method development. Dependent on the target analyte polarity, thermal degradation, solubility and type of matrix, an appropriate method of analysis will be established. The study design incorporates development of a suitable method for identification and quantitation of eight selected explosive compounds, in water samples: NB, 1,3-DNB, 1,3,5-TNB, 2,4,6-TNT, 2,4-DNT, RDX, HMX and PETN. A survey of the published articles and writings provides a foundation to the thesis and gives additional background on the researched topic. Some of the proposed methods in the literature have weaknesses, such as low resolution, low sensitivity, low yield recoveries, extended run times, and one greatly misleading fact where the representative MRMs are not uniquely chosen for each analyte, but rather having common fragment ions. The author has developed a mass spectrometric method, where MRMs are manually selected in such way to offer distinctive fragmentation features for each target compound. As such, this method would be useful in the positive identification of the analytes. Since there are only a few papers on commonly used organic secondary explosives, where an extensive mass spectrometric evaluation is presented, we furthermore aimed at developing a step-by- step methodology for the optimization of the source and compound-related parameters. The technique yielding the best data and tailored to our scope of developing a general method for explosive compou…
abstract: Traces of explosives and their degradation products present in explosives contaminated sites from military sources, such as training facilities, impose a great concern over the public health and our eco-system. This work is centered around finding an efficient way to extraction of these chemicals from water samples and their analysis using advanced separation technology: LC-MS/MS Shimadzu Prominence 8050 and AB Sciex Trap 4000 LC-MS/MS. Different extraction methods will be proposed, along with chromatographic and mass spectroscopy method development. Dependent on the target analyte polarity, thermal degradation, solubility and type of matrix, an appropriate method of analysis will be established. The study design incorporates development of a suitable method for identification and quantitation of eight selected explosive compounds, in water samples: NB, 1,3-DNB, 1,3,5-TNB, 2,4,6-TNT, 2,4-DNT, RDX, HMX and PETN. A survey of the published articles and writings provides a foundation to the thesis and gives additional background on the researched topic. Some of the proposed methods in the literature have weaknesses, such as low resolution, low sensitivity, low yield recoveries, extended run times, and one greatly misleading fact where the representative MRMs are not uniquely chosen for each analyte, but rather having common fragment ions. The author has developed a mass spectrometric method, where MRMs are manually selected in such way to offer distinctive fragmentation features for each target compound. As such, this method would be useful in the positive identification of the analytes. Since there are only a few papers on commonly used organic secondary explosives, where an extensive mass spectrometric evaluation is presented, we furthermore aimed at developing a step-by- step methodology for the optimization of the source and compound-related parameters. The technique yielding the best data and tailored to our scope of developing a general method for explosive compou…
author: Veresmortean, Cristina I
keywords: Environmental Chemistry, LCMS, Explosives, Environmental, Water Analysis
date published: 2021-09-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:59:14Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York