The dependence of sorbent/analyte type on observed differences in supercritical fluid extraction efficiencies employing extraction vessels of different dimensions

Summary The effect of extraction cell dimensions (i.d.: length) on supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) efficiencies of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is shown to be dependent on the type of sorbent used. For octadecylsilane (C18) sorbents, there is a significant increase in observed SFE recoveries of PCBs when the cell dimensions are made more broad (increased i.d.: length); whereas, no effect of cell geometry is observed when the common adsorbent, Florisil, is utilized. Additionally, recoveries decreased in proportion to the chlorine number, for the PCBs studied, for octadecylsilane sorbents, while no such effect was observed for Florisil. These results illustrate the magnitude of the matrix effect in SFE, which generally dominated observed recoveries, even in the simplest analyte/sorbent systems such as the one studied here.