Determination of 2,4,6 – trinitrotoluene in the soil samples around the Cu Chi Tunnel area by gas chromatography – mass spectrometry

Abstract

During Vietnam War, nitroaromatic compounds such as 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) have been widely used many kinds of explosive which bombed the immense network of connecting underground tunnels in Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This study aims to optimize the method of using gas chromatography − mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to analyze TNT and then apply it to determine TNT in soil samples which collected around the Cu Chi area tunnels. In this experiment, ultrasonic was used to extract TNT from the soil samples to Acetonitrile before injecting 1µL sample solution into GC-MS. This method had linear concentration range of TNT from (5.0 to 500) ng/ g with limit of detection was 2.0 ng/g, the relative standard deviations of peak area were under 2.0 % and the recovery was from 80 % to 103 %. The results showed that TNT contamination in studied soil samples were not detected.

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