Gas chromatography mass spectrometry calibration curves for acetophenone and 1-Phenylethanol

Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is a sensitive technique for the detection of organic compounds from different matrixes. Sensitive to matrix interference, the technique often needs high dilution factor to obtain linear calibration curves useful for downstream analysis. This work presents the GC-MS calibration curves of acetophenone and 1-Phenylethanol obtained with Agilent 5890 GC with 5977B MSD detector. Ethyl acetate was the solvent and diluent for the calibration standards. Temperature programme used was 50 ^oC for 5 min, ramp from 50 ^oC to 120 ^oC at 10 ^oC/min, ramp from 120 ^oC to 280 ^oC at 80 ^oC/min, and hold at 280 ^oC for 3 min. Results indicated that linear calibration curves could not be obtained for both acetophenone and 1-Phenylethanol within the concentration range from 0.1 g/L to 2.0 g/L. Thus, dilution with ethyl acetate was effected, and linear calibration curves with good correlation coefficients could be obtained for acetophenone and 1-Phenylethanol within the concentration range 0.01 g/L to 0.1 g/L. Overall, the calibration effort revealed that GC-MS was prone to signal saturation from detecting acetophenone and 1-Phenylethanol molecular ions at relatively low concentrations of 1-2 g/L, thereby, pushing down the linear calibration range, and making analysis with the technique difficult and more prone to errors from dilution of samples.