The use of TD for analysing stationary source emissions in accordance with CEN/TS 13649
First presented at the AQE conference 2018
Emissions from industry contribute significantly to global levels of man-made VOCs, and as a result in 2001 the European technical committee for air quality (CEN/TC 264) released a standard method that defined a procedure for monitoring VOCs from stationary sources (e.g. stack gases).
This procedure involved the collection of airborne vapours onto glass tubes packed with activated carbon, followed by extraction of analytes with carbon disulfide (CS2) and analysis by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS).
However, in the years since this method was released, thermal desorption (TD) has become far more popular than solvent extraction for analysis of airborne VOCs.
As a result of this, in 2014 CEN/TC 264 released a revised edition of CEN/TS 13649,2 which (as an alternative to solvent extraction) specifies the collection of airborne vapours onto sorbent-packed steel tubes, followed by analysis using TD–GC–MS. The inclusion of TD into this method brings it into line with other national and international standard methods for VOC analysis.
This poster highlights the outstanding performance of a TD–GC–MS system for analysis of airborne VOCs in accordance with CEN/TS 13649.
