Carbon sorbents for the retention of thermodecomposition compounds from microplastics

Abstract

Carbon sorbents have been tested in this study to improve the retention of microplastics thermodecomposition compounds in Thermoextraction-Desorption Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (TED-GC-MS) technique and has been demonstrated an optimal behavior for this application, highlighting two main advantages with regard to conventional PDMS sorbents; On the one hand, carbons present slit-type pores, being optimal for retaining the aromatic compounds released from most polymers. In addition, those materials have shown to have a greater retention capacity than PDMS being between 1.25 and 25 times more efficient. Combination of PDMS+Carbon sorbents increases retention of the most representative compounds for each polymer up to 1.7 times with regard to only carbon, increasing sensitivity, but with an experimental procedure more complicated, because two desorption process must be done.On the other hand, carbon materials can retain the chlorinated compounds released by thermodecomposition of PVC, while conventional PDMS sorbent is not effective for these compounds.