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In an effort to reduce ambient ozone and carbon monoxide levels, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has mandated the use of oxygenated fuels under the Clean Air Act. These fuels may contain varying amounts of methanol, ethanol, or other alcohols, and ethers. The current reference method for the analysis of methanol in vehicle emissions involves sample collection with impingers that contain water and the subsequent analysis of this aqueous solution by gas chromatography/flame ionization detection (GG/FID). The impinger method is problematical in that it is both time consuming and inconvenient in a test facility in which it is the only “wet” chemical method employed. In response to this problem, two alternative “non-wet” methanol methods were evaluated against the impinger method and against each other. The first alternative method employed a switched two-column GC/FID analysis of gaseous samples.

Six subcompact automobiles were evaluated in this study for the emission of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and other organics into the passenger compartment. The quantitation of VCM was performed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) in the single ion mode. The interiors of the automobiles were thermostatically controlled at either 45° or 65° C for 3 hrs before sampling the car interior. Each automobile was sampled for VCM at both temperatures. Samples for qualitative analyses were obtained at 65° C. The GC/MS analysis resulted in the identification of 147 organic compounds in the automobile which were not found in the ambient air in the vicinity of the test.