Application Notes – General topics & overviews

This Application Note is a summary listing of key nationally and internationally approved standard methods relating to monitoring volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air. The methods covered range from the widely-used US EPA, ISO and ASTM methods, to more specialist industry-specific methods and guidelines.

This Application Note is a compilation of publications and representative presentations that cite Markes’ thermal desorption (TD) products. The aim is to allow the reader to quickly identify relevant citations in the literature, as well as to demonstrate the versatility of Markes’ equipment across the whole range of VOC analytical applications.

This Application Note summarises the history of thermal desorption (TD), and describes the technological advances that have led to it becoming the foremost sample introduction methodology for GC. A comprehensive overview of the applications of TD is given, followed by discussion of MS technologies that enhance its power and application range.

This Application Note presents the current state-of-the-art in thermal desorption methodology, and describes recent developments in areas such as sorbent research, sampler design, approaches to analytical quality assurance and on-tube derivatisation.

This Application Note provides a brief overview of each of the main GC ‘front-end’ technologies, including equilibrium headspace, purge-and-trap, headspace with thermal desorption, solvent extraction, solid-phase extraction and thermal desorption. The advantages, limitations and applications of each are summarised

The field of chemical ecology has expanded rapidly in recent decades, and offers fascinating insights into the complex interactions involving plants, microorganisms and animals. Thermal desorption (TD), in conjunction with gas chromatography (GC), is a useful technique for analysis of trace-level volatiles from living organisms, and in this overview we describe the key features that make it valuable and the various sampling techniques with which it is compatible. We then illustrate the scope of its application by surveying the recent scientific literature.