Abstract
The article presents a new method of modification of hydrophobic sorbents. To improve sorption preconcentration of polar organic compounds in the air analysis, these sorbents are coated with cobalt
chloride. This modification increases retention volume of lower alcohols by 5–10 fold as compared to that
of unmodified sorbents and solves the problem of gas-chromatographic determination at 1–2 ppb
(micrograms/m3
) by using the most common flame ionization detector. It should be noted that the
modification of hydrophobic sorbents by cobalt chloride has little influence on their porosimetry para-
meters (specific surface area, proportions of meso- and micropores) and modified sorbents are capable of
retaining hydrophobic nonpolar and weakly polar analytes as well as original unmodified sorbents. Thus,
a fairly simple procedure leads to a large positive effect.