Development of Dry-herb vaporizer-assisted solid-phase Microextraction for the analysis of volatile Organic compounds

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a simple, efficient, and solvent-free technique. It integrates the steps of traditional liquid-liquid extraction, i.e., sampling, extraction, concentration, derivatization, in a single step. It is easy, combining capability with gas chromatography (GC), liquid chromatography (LC), and mass spectrometry (MS), which makes this method fast, reliable, and sensitive. SPME method is often associated with extraction at elevated temperature, since increasing temperature may positively affect extraction by increasing the analyte volatility, diffusion, and extraction rate. In this work, a dry-herb vaporizer (vaping pen) was used as a sample heating device for direct desorption of volatile analytes into the headspace of the device. The extraction was performed by sorbing analytes from their gas phase in the headspace of the vape onto a SPME fiber followed by desorption in the injection port for GC-MS characterization. Compounds from horseradish, cinnamon, and gasoline-spiked soil samples were analyzed. The samples were also analyzed by conventional headspace SPMEGC-MS. The results from both methods were compared. The methods produce comparable results in terms of extracted compounds and relative area percentages, however, the dry-herb vaporizer had improved sensitivity.