Analysis and quantification of VOCs and sVOCs from plastic samples

Bottled water consumption has been growing up the last decades and is often perceived as pure and safe. Nevertheless, the Natural Resources Defense Council has shown that one third of the bottled water contained chemical pollutants such as chloroform or benzene in levels that exceed the regulatory limits. Therefore, there is a need for an industrial monitoring system that can analyse plastic samples before it is used for making bottles.

Chromatotec has designed a turnkey solution for the measurement of VOCs and sVOCs in plastic. The samples are heated at high temperature (typically between 200 and 300°C) to release the VOCs and sVOCs from the plastic. The emitted compounds are first collected in a pre-concentrator and then injected in a chromatograph equipped with Flame Ionization Detector and a Mass Spectrometer. The results from both detectors are automatically processed with Vistachrom Software and provide automatically complete characterisation of the sample.

This analytical solution is perfectly suited for complete characterisation of plastics but also for analysis of VOCs and sVOCs emitted from any solid samples such as rubber or soil samples.