Determination Method of Peroxide Explosive HMTD by GC-MS

A gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method for detection the peroxide explosive hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) was established to address the difficulty of HMTD detection in practical cases. The samples were extracted with acetone, followed by centrifugation to obtain the supernatant which was then concentrated and diluted. Separation was achieved using an HP-5MS chromatographic column (30 m×0.25 mm×0.25 μm) at a flow rate of 4.0 mL/min. The samples were analyzed using electron impact ionization (EI) mode and quantified by an external standard method. HMTD exhibited good linearity within the concentration range of 1 to 100 μg/mL, with a correlation coefficient (R²) of at least 0.995. When employing blank dust as the matrix, the method demonstrated a detection limit of 0.4 μg/g in full scan mode (SCAN). However, in selective ion scanning mode (SIM), the detection limit was significantly lower at 0.01 μg/g, with a quantitation limit of 0.04 μg/g. The average recovery rate ranged from 89.15% to 95.41%, indicating good reliability of the method. Additionally, the intra-day precision ranged from 4.67% to 6.26%, while the inter-day precision varied between 4.59% and 12.69%, demonstrating favorable reproducibility of the assay. This method is simple, reliable, and highly sensitive, and has been successfully applied to detect HMTD in practical cases. It is suitable for the detection of HMTD in suspected explosives and explosive soil, meeting the needs of actual case investigations.