Pyrolysis-GC/MS, A Powerful Analytical Tool for Additives and Polymers Characterization

Abstract

Analytical Pyrolysis technique hyphenated to GC/MS is used to obtain structural information of macromolecules. The composition and relative abundance of the pyrolysis products are characteristic for a given polymer and their determination allows the identification of materials that cannot be determined otherwise. In the present work different examples are presented in which different pyrolysis techniques are used, such as pulsed, fractional and sequential pyrolysis, working with polymer solutions, cold injection in split or narrow band mode or thermochemolysis. Specially useful is serial pyrolysis which is performed in two or more steps. Initially, volatile compounds are thermally extracted from the sample at a relatively low temperature (thermal desorption), and then the same sample is pyrolyzed at a higher temperature.

Digestate Quality Originating from Kitchen Waste

“…FTIR spectroscopy reaches detection limits of down to 20 µm, while Raman microspectroscopy can identify particles down to 1 µm in size [57,60]. Pyrolysis GC-MS allows the plastic types of particles > 100 µm to be identified [61], from complex matrices and mixtures [62], while the ATR-FTIR was proven to be efficient for the identification of larger particles (>500 µm) [63,64]. To analyse smaller particles, ATR-FTIR coupled with a microscope (µ-ATR-FTIR) is recommended [65].…”

Resource recovery from discarded COVID-19 PPE kit through catalytic fast pyrolysis

“…Using this method, it is possible to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the composition of monomers, stereochemistry, tacticity, and molecular configurations of homo and copolymers. Analytical pyrolysis can help identify low-concentration pyrolysates, residual solvents, additives, and crosslinking agents without introducing additional contaminants and requires only minimal sample preparation [15] . Pyrolysis is better than incineration owing to the lower temperature required to convert the wastes into value-added chemicals or fuel molecules, while avoiding the generation of carcinogenic substances such as furans and dioxins in the gas phase [16] .…”