Two consecutive cold traps combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyse gas phase mainstream cigarette smoke components

To improve the collection efficiency, sensitivity and throughput of existing analysis methods, a new trapping system based on low temperature and adsorbent trap was developed by combining two consecutive cold traps with GC/MS detection for high-throughput analysis of gas phase components in mainstream cigarette smoke. The system consisted of two consecutive cold traps, with the first cold trap being a -21℃ ice-salt bath and the second cold trap being a -78℃ dry ice/isopropanol trap. In addition, gyrotron and XAD-2 sorbent tube were embedded inside the two consecutive cold traps. The results obtained showed that:1) The puff profile obtained with the cryo-trap system was close to the standard puff profile. 2) Most interested gas phase components were completely trapped by this method and a total of 134 components were identified. 3) The method featured a good precision:the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the 112 identified components were under 10%. 4) The method presented a good linearity for the working calibration equations (R²>0.99) and high accuracy (all average recoveries ranged from 80% to 120%). 5) The test results for two Kentucky reference cigarettes (1R5F and 3R4F) with the developed method agreed well with the reported values. This method is suitable for analyzing the gas phase components of mainstream cigarette smoke.