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Emission from materials

What is released from my material? By creating a headspace, the emitting VOC of the product can be determined.

VOC emit from material, releasing VOC into the air.

Sample preparation

Various sample preparation techniques are possible to analyse the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from materials or liquids. The choice depends on a number of important parameters, such as temperature, duration,... to simulate process conditions.

  • Static headspace
  • Dynamic headspace
  • Micro-Chamber Thermal Extractor (µ-CTE)
Nappies in a sampling bag to collect and analyse the released VOC

What is a headspace?

A balance is established between a product and its environment. When this is done in a sealed medium, such as a capped glass bottle, the gas phase is called the headspace. In its simplest form, we speak of a static headspace.

When a gas stream is added to the setup, volatile organic compounds are extracted from the headspace. This disrupts the equilibrium, causing VOC to be released from the material again to the headspace to re-establish equilibrium. This leads to a higher VOC emissions and this is called a dynamic headspace.

Adsorption cartridges are placed on top of the µ-CTE to collect the released VOC immediately

A specific sample preparation: micro-Chamber Thermal Extractor

The micro-Chamber Thermal Extractor (or µ-CTE for short) uses the principle of dynamic headspace. The big advantage is that in an extremely precise way, the conditions such as flow rate and temperature can be set in order to simulate certain process parameters.

In addition, adsorption cartridges can be mounted directly on to the device to immediately collect the released volatile organic compounds for analysis.

Different products and materials to analyse for VOC

After the sample preparation, the analysis

The collected air can be further screened for volatile organic compounds for each scenario. Depending on the demand and purpose of the project, a choice is made from the available VOC analyses. How the emitted VOC are collected is adjusted according to the desired analysis.

How can we help?

Do you have questions about VOC analysis? We can be reached via the channels below or leave a message on our contact page.