Rapid solid phase extraction of dissolved organic matter

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a complex mixture of molecules found ubiquitously in freshwater and saltwater environments. Its structures contain valuable information content on the sources of molecules as well as the mechanisms at work within an aquatic ecosystem. Recent advancements in high resolution mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography have made inroads into determinations of the molecular structures within DOM. Such analyses, however, generally require a prior step to concentrate/isolate DOM, and this step often limits the number of samples that can be analyzed. This study has developed a fast method to concentrate DOM on commercially available online solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, which can be directly eluted onto an HPLC-MS system. This rapid solid phase extraction (RSPE) method requires less sample (10-100 mL) than previous SPE methods for DOM isolation. Additionally, this study tested a suite of SPE phases to find a combination that improves DOM recovery as compared with commonly used approaches. When a polystyrene divinylbenzene phase (RP-1) was coupled with an activated carbon (CAR) phase, recoveries were found to be significantly higher than in previous SPE studies relying upon single phases. RSPE was tested for a diverse set of salty and freshwater samples with recoveries ranging from 46% to 78% of the total DOC. It was also tested on a suite of model compounds (including caffeine) and should be applicable to anthropogenic compounds in aquatic environments, although, in such cases, optimization may be needed to minimize the natural organic matter signal that was maximized in this study.