XAD resins are used as solid phase extraction materials for applications in water and air sampling. When received, resins are wet and contain contaminants. The current methods for cleaning and eluting require large amounts of solvent and time. Here, an XAD-2 resin is cleaned using ASE, then spiked with organochlorine pesticides (OCP) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) standards and eluted using ASE. The results show that ASE effectively and efficiently cleans and dries the resin without damaging the particles, and is able to elute OCP and PAH compounds from XAD resin with good results.

Residue analysis in crops and food products is routinely performed in regulatory and industrial laboratories around the world. Accelerated solvent extraction is an extraction technique that speeds the extraction process and reduces the total amount of solvent used. The system uses conventional liquid solvents at elevated temperatures and pressures, which results in increased extraction kinetics. Extraction of samples ranging from 1 to 30 g typically requires 12–17 min and 15–50 mL of solvent.

Twenty chlorinated pesticides were extracted from drinking water using a Thermo Scientific Dionex AutoTrace 280 Solid Phase Extraction Instrument (AT 280). The efficiency of the Dionex AT280 method was compared to the traditional liquid-liquid phase extraction (LLE). The manual extraction required significantly more time compared to the Dionex AutoTrace 280 instrument. Analyte recovery was improved using the AT280 Automated SPE instrument for the majority of compounds without sacrificing the precision of analysis.

ASE is EPA approved under method 3545A. This technique uses high temperatures and pressures to increase the kinetics of the extraction process, thus decreasing the extraction time and solvent consumption. Also, because ASE is automated, it allows unattended extraction of up to 24 samples. In this application note, OCPs are extracted from certified reference material (CRM) BCR 115 (Institute for Reference Materials and Measurement, Geel, Belgium), an animal feed containing certified levels of organochlorine pesticides.

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) are toxic at low concentrations and therefore highly regulated. Additionally, these contaminants are difficult to extract. Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) is an equivalent extraction method for U.S. EPA Methods 3545. ASE uses solvents at elevated temperatures and pressures, thereby increasing the extraction efficiency while consuming small amounts of solvent at significantly less time. Here ASE has been used to extract PCDDs and PCDFs from ground chimney brick, urban dust, fly ash, and sediment samples.