General approach to the fractionation and class determination of complex mixtures of chlorinated aromatic compounds

Among the "inadvertent" environmental pollutants are polychlorinated biphenyls, terphenyls, quadphenyls, naphthalenes, diphenyl ethers, dibenzofurans, dibenzo-p-dioxins and benzenes. Mixtures of these classes of compounds also occur in commercial products such as transformer fluids. To analyze such mixtures, gas chromatography--mass spectrometry may be combined with pre-fractionation on basic and acidic alumina columns and semi-quantitative perchlorination techniques. These procedures are illustrated for synthetic mixtures as well as for two samples of stored transformer fluid. Although the described procedure is mainly intended to be applied to the characterization of the major class components of such mixtures, it is also applicable to the determination of trace components such as the dibenzofurans in commercial polychlorinated biphenyls. The mass spectral techniques permit the simultaneous patterning, or "fingerprinting", of the compounds comprising each major class of chlorinated aromatics present.