Publications

The off-flavor of “tainted wine” is attributed mainly to the presence of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (2,4,6-TCA) in the wine. In the present study the atmospheric pressure gas-phase ion chemistry, pertaining to ion mobility spectrometry, of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole was investigated. In positive ion mode the dominant species is a monomer ion with a lower intensity dimer species with reduced mobility values (K0) of 1.58 and 1.20 cm2 V−1 s−1, respectively. In negative mode the ion with K0 = 1.64 cm2 V−1 s−1 is ascribed to a trichlorophenoxide species while the ions with K0 = 1.48 and 1.13 cm2 V−1 s−1 are attributed to chloride attachment adducts of a TCA monomer and dimer, respectively. The limit of detection of the system for 2,4,6-TCA dissolved in dichloromethane deposited on a filter paper was 2.1 ug and 1.7 ppm in the gas phase. In ethanol and in wine the limit of detection is higher implying that pre-concentration and pre-separation are required before IMS can be used to monitor the level of TCA in wine.

JTD Keywords: 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole, Gas phase ion chemistry, Ion mobility spectrometry, "Tainted wine"

In this work, a new methodology to analyze spectra time-series obtained from ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has been investigated. The proposed method combines the advantages of multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) for an optimal physical and chemical interpretation of the system (qualitative information) and a multivariate calibration technique such as polynomial partial least squares (poly-PLS) for an improved quantification (quantitative information) of new samples. Ten different concentrations of 2-butanone and ethanol were generated using a volatile generator based on permeation tubes. The different concentrations were measured with IMS. These data present a non-linear behaviour as substance concentration increases. Although MCR-ALS is based on a bilinear decomposition, non-linear behaviour can be modelled adding new components to the model. After spectral pre-processing, MCR-ALS was applied aiming to get information about the ionic species that appear in the drift tube and their evolution with the analyte concentration. By resolving the IMS data matrix, concentration profiles and pure spectra of the different ionic species have been obtained for both analytes. Finally, poly-PLS was used in order to build a calibration model using concentration profiles obtained from MCR-ALS for ethanol and 2-butanone. The results, with more than 99% of explained variance for both substances, show the feasibility of using MCR-ALS to resolve IMS datasets. Furthermore, similar or better prediction accuracy is achieved when concentration profiles from MCR-ALS are used to build a calibration model (using poly-PLS) compared to other standard univariate and multivariate calibration methodologies.

JTD Keywords: Ion Mobility Spectrometry, Multivariate Curve Resolution, Gas phase ion chemistry, Multivariate calibration