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CEM - Abstract

Abstract Title: The use of thermal desorption for the analysis of stationary source emissions in accordance with CEN/TS 13649: A valid alternative to traditional solvent-extraction methodology
Presenter Name: Massimo Santor
Company/Organisation: Markes International Ltd
Country: United Kingdom

Abstract Information :

Emissions from industry contribute significantly to global levels global of man-made VOCs, and as a result in 2001 the European technical committee for air quality (CEN/TC 264) released standard method CEN/TS 13649, which defined a procedure for monitoring VOCs from stationary sources, such as in stack gases.

This procedure involved the collection of airborne vapours onto glass tubes packed with activated carbon, followed by elution of analytes with carbon disulfide and analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). However, in the years since this method was released, thermal desorption has become far more popular than solvent extraction for analysis of airborne VOCs, for reasons of analytical performance as well as practicality.

As a result of these developments, in 2014 CEN/TC 264 released a revised edition of CEN/TS 13649, which (as an alternative to solvent extraction) specifies the collection of airborne vapours onto sorbent-packed steel tubes, followed by analysis of the tubes using thermal desorption (TD)-GC-MS. Thermal desorption is now widely considered to be superior to solvent extraction for reasons of practicality and analytical performance, and its inclusion in CEN/TS 13649 brings this method into line with other national and international standard methods for VOC analysis.

This poster will describe those advantages, and illustrate the application of the new TD method cited in CEN/TS 13649 to the analysis of VOCs in ambient air.