Thermal desorption is a valuable and versatile GC sample introduction technique for a wide variety of solid, liquid, and gaseous samples that are not amenable to direct injection into the GC instrument. Gas-phase samples can be collected and concentrated onto adsorbent tubes from the atmosphere or from the headspace over liquid or solid samples, and volatiles trapped onto the tubes are thermally desorbed and introduced onto the GC column. Direct thermal extraction of volatiles and semivolatiles in solid materials allows simplifi ed trace GC analysis of volatiles and semivolatiles in such samples as polymers, waxes, powders, pharmaceutical formulations, foods, and cosmetics. For liquid samples, the Gerstel Twister stir bar sorptive extraction technique combined with thermal desorption enables trace and ultra-trace GC or GC/MS analysis.

Thermal Desorption System (TDS)

The GERSTEL Thermal Desorption System (TDS) is a flexible multi-functional system for highly sensitive determination of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs) that have been trapped on adsorbent tubes or on GERSTEL Twisters.

The TDS is also frequently used for direct thermal extraction and determination of VOCs and SVOCs from solids without sample preparation. Application examples are natural products, flavor and fragance, emssions from materials that are used indoors in buildings or in automobiles, semiconductors, polymers and packaging.