Performances of multiresidue analysis of one hundred of pesticides and contaminants, using GC-Q-Orbitrap method in full scan mode were compared to those obtained with GC-triple-quadrupole method in multiple reaction monitoring mode. In terms of sensitivity, 86% of molecules exhibited lower limit of detection values using GC-Q-Orbitrap than using GC-triple-quadrupole. For the GC-Q-Orbitrap method, more than 85% of the pesticides and contaminants showed good recovery [70-120%] in wheat samples, with relative standard deviation values < 20%. GC-Q-Orbitrap method appeared the most sensitive for most pesticides studied in wheat with limit of quantification values ranged between 0.1 µg/kg and 4 µg/kg. Moreover, the matrix effect was acceptable in wheat extracts for 84 molecules but strong suppression of the chromatographic signal was observed for 16 molecules for the GC-Q-Orbitrap method. The injection of unpurified wheat extracts spiked at 10 µg/kg proved the potential of the GC-Q-Orbitrap method for use in performing high-throughput pesticide screening.

Asphalt is subjected to aging, leading to physical and chemical modifications reducing its performance. Recently, the Western Research Institute developed the SAR-AD method that allowed the separation of asphalt into eight fractions (saturates, aromatics 1, aromatics 2, aromatics 3, resins, asphaltenes 1, asphaltene 2, and asphaltenes 3). In this work, this analytical method was used to study asphalt aging processes in greater detail. Several asphalts of different origins and reconstituted blends were studied. These products were aged during several durations using a PAV (pressure aging vessel) between 0 and 48 h to collect information on the evolution of each SAR-AD fraction. Different evolutions were observed according to the initial asphalt composition and SAR-AD fraction studied. The saturated subfamily seemed to be slightly impacted by aging. The amount of three aromatic subfamilies decreased with a larger decrease of aromatics 3 than aromatics 2, itself larger than aromatics 1. The content of the resin subfamily increased after 48 h of PAV aging. The asphaltene 1 and asphaltene 2 subfamilies exhibited an increasing trend. Moreover, the quantity of asphaltenes 2 created seemed to correlate to the initial asphaltene content. The evolutions of the asphaltene 3 subfamily were not significant. However, a specific behavior was highlighted for the most asphaltenic sample. For this specific sample, the increase of resin content was weaker, the mass of asphaltenes 1 decreased, and the amount of asphaltenes 3 increased during aging. Given the large amount of data generated, an original approach was developed to statistically identify the most affected SAR-AD subfamily and determine correlations among them. Two PCAs (Principal Component Analysis) were conducted on asphalt SAR-AD data. This statistical analysis indicated two generic asphalt aging pathways. The first aging pathway could be the conversion of aromatics 2 into resins, with no evidence that resins could contribute to asphaltene creation. The second aging pathway showed the conversion of aromatics 3 directly into asphaltenes 2. These two aging pathways highlighted that the conversion of molecules in more polar ones during aging could skip SAR-AD subfamilies, meaning that asphaltenes could be created without involving resins.