Preparation of aqueous fatty acids for hydrogen and carbon stable isotope analysis by solid phase extraction

Stable isotope analyses of fatty acids in environmental waters provides important information as to their source(s). Analysis is often confounded due to low concentrations of fatty acids and/or a complex sample matrix requiring separation of the target analyte. The purpose of this study was to validate a method to extract fatty acids from natural waters using solid phase extraction (SPE) before compound specific isotope analysis (CSIA). Three SPE cartridges and multiple eluting solvents were tested to determine the efficiency, isotopic fractionation, and reproducibility of each extraction technique. Our results indicated that surface-modified styrene divinylbenzene cartridges, when eluted with methanol, caused negligible fractionation of the hydrogen isotopes and minimal fractionation of the carbon isotopes, but that isotopic fractionation occurred when compounds were only partially eluted from SPE cartridges. Compounds were also extracted from landfill leachate using both SPE and liquid–liquid extraction (LLE). The hydrogen isotope composition (δ2H) of compounds extracted from water using either method were within experimental precision and the carbon isotope composition (δ13C) of all but one fatty acid were within experimental precision. Therefore, these experiments prove the aforementioned SPE methods to be a convenient and precise method to extract fatty acids from natural waters before CSIA.