The use of Thermal Desorption with Optimized Sampling Tubes for Quantifying Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Air

This application note describes the use of thermal desorption (TD) with gas chromatography (GC) for the quantitation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Here it is shown how a range of PAHs from naphthalene to benzo[ghi]perylene can be readily captured on to specially-optimized sorbent tubes, and released from them quantitatively. Using this technique, low detection limits are obtained for airborne PAHs with minimal breakthrough and excellent linearity, even when the total sampling volume exceeds 400 L.