The detection and identification of ignitable liquids is crucial for the determination of the cause of a fire in forensic arson investigations. Headspace extraction and solid phase microextraction (SPME) are common methods used to concentrate and extract ignitable liquid residue for identification by Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy (GC/MS). In this work, headspace extraction and SPME methods were developed for use with GC/MS for the identification of a wide range of ignitable molecules for the creation of an in-house reference library to be used in future forensic science education and research. A subset of the ignitable samples was used with various textiles to examine the effect of polymer matrices that may be present in a fire. Headspace extraction methods produced clear reference chromatograms and mass spectra to be used for comparison in forensic case studies; however, this method proved to have lower sensitivity for analyte detection. Development of SPME methods is ongoing with preliminary results showing higher sensitivity detection. Differences in spectra were observed when comparing reference samples to samples on textiles. These results will be useful in further development of the in-house reference library and future studies of forensic analytical techniques.

Development of headspace extraction and SPME methods for the GC/MS analysis of ignitable liquids on textiles

ACS Spring 2022

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