A comparison of the critical parameters of some adsorbents employed in trapping and thermal desorption of organic pollutants

Abstract

A comparison of some adsorbents, commonly used for trapping trace volatile organic pollutants followed by thermal desorption, is presented. The evaluation has been performed on 12 compounds representative of the main classes of organic substances. Breakthrough volumes and desorption recoveries have been measured. Every adsorbent gave good results for a range of compounds, but none were able to cover all the compounds examined. Thus, a multilayer trap utilising the best features of each adsorbent was introduced with very good results.