Pyrolysis GC/MS for determination of microplastics
The topic of "Microplastics and their impact on the Environment" has gained recognition in the last two decades. Suitable analytical methods had to be developed and established for detection of microplastics in various sample material to get reliable results.
Pyrolysis GC/MS is particularly suited for analysis of microplastics as no sample preparation is required. Sample amounts as little as 50 µg are sufficient to get reproducible results.
The furnace is the heart of the pyrolysis and has to be perfectly adjusted for a subsequent analysis of the desorbed and pyrolized substances in GC/MS. SIM recommends the Multi-Shot Pyrolizer by Frontier Lab, which uses the unique Double-Shot process.
During this process the sample is heated as usual for thermal desorption. After desorption - unlike in other systems - the sample does not stay in the furnace, but is automatically drawn from the hot zone. The sample stays in slightly higher than room temperature until the micro furnace is heated up to pyrolysis temperature. The sample then gets dropped at very high velocity into the tempered pyrolysis zone.
Advantages
The Multi-Shot Pyrolyzer EGA/PY-3030D with a low mass ceramic heater has proven itself in practice and offers crucial advantages compared to pyrolysis systems with filament-heating elements:
- pyrolysis temperatures up to 1050 °C (Multi-Shot)
- very precise temperature control in the micro furnace (40-1050 °C ± 0,1 °C)
- simplest handling of samples through weighing in sample cup (approx. 50-200 µg)
- no condensation of gases at cold spots during transition to GC due to an interface-heating
- simple and fast identification of unknown substances due to the F-search software, which can also be used to create a customer-specific library or to expand the Frontier Lab libraries
- robust autosampler for up to 48 samples