Solid phase extraction (SPE) is one of the sample preparation methods most widely used by chromatographers, as can be seen from the large number of SPE methods found ...

3-MCPD and Glycidol and especially their fatty acid esters are process contaminants that are formed, for example, when edible oils and fats are refined. At least ...

Water quality is of the utmost importance and recently the importance of analyzing water for emerging contaminants has been brought to light. Among the emerging ...

Well known for their characteristic fl avor and fragrance characteristics, terpenes are contained in the derived essential oils of cannabis. Analysis of cannabis for terpene concentrations can be applied to strain identifi cation, referred to as fi ngerprinting, and for concentration accuracy when applied to medicinal treatments. Terpenes have high vapor pressures, are extremely volatile and thus are an excellent candidate for static headspace GC analysis. In this work, headspace SPME (HS-SPME) was combined with GC/MS for the quantitative analysis of several selected terpenes in cannabis.

An automated analysis system consisting of a dynamic headspace (DHS) system coupled with thermal desorption-Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC/MS) was used for fully automated micro-scale chamber material emission analysis of Spray Polyurethane Foam (SPF). Closed-cell and open-cell SPF samples were analyzed for emissions of TVOCs and high boiling compounds such as, for example, flame retardants and amine catalyst. Foam samples were analyzed qualitatively, and 15 hour emission tests subsequently carried out to investigate off-gassing mechanisms of the foams.

The manual transfer of liquid standards and solutions is usually part of the daily activities throughout the analytical laboratory. For example, liquids must be transferred when creating calibration standard samples, pipetting solvents, and combining liquids. The accurate and precise transfer of liquids can be critical to the analytical results. Liquids with low boiling points or high viscosities pose several challenges to achieving accurate and precise delivery of desired volumes. Verifi cation of the volumes of liquids transferred would help verify the quality of the analytical procedure andensure the high quality of the resulting data.

The influence of variations in desorption temperature, desorption flow and sample preparation on VDA 278 analysis method [1] robustness and reproducibility is studied using a wide variety of samples from automobile interior materials: polypropylene (PP) granulate, polyurethane (PU) foam, leather, Duroplastic plastics and paint. It is shown that a temperature difference of just two degrees at 90 °C or at 120 °C can lead to an emission deviation of ± 20 percent. Also, desorption flow is shown to have significant influence on paint stripe emission values while there is little influence on samples like PP granulate.

Headspace gas chromatography (HS-GC) is frequently used for the analysis of aroma compounds in food due to its practical advantages of simplicity, amenability to full automation, less contamination from non-volatile constituents and elimination or reduction of solvent use. There are several established HS techniques, e.g. static headspace (SHS), dynamic headspace (DHS), and head space solid phase micro-extraction (HS-SPME). However, these techniques are more selective for volatile and/or hydrophobic compounds and result in a partial chromatogram with an under-representation of hydrophilic and/or low vapor pressure aroma compounds.

Rubber particles, sometimes derived from used tires, are used on artificial turf athletic fields, on playgrounds and as mulch. These particles can off-gas and leach compounds into the environment and may present a contact or inhalation hazard. Recent news reports in the US and Europe indicate a growing concern regarding potential health effects in athletes using these artificial turf fields.

Aroma Offi ce 2D (Gerstel K.K.) is an integrated software approach for simultaneous processing of both retention index (RI) and mass spectral (MS) data for rapid and improved identifi cation of fl avor compounds. The program can be integrated into Agilent Chemstation Software and searches are performed using CAS numbers of candidate compounds after library searching and corresponding automatically generated RI values. When MS signals are too weak to be used the software allows two RI values from orthogonal columns (after GC-O organoleptic evaluation) to be cross searched in the database. This offers a very useful additional identifi cation procedure for fl avor compounds.