Abstract
Once printed, books are always accompanied by the smells of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are continuously emitted not only by inks but also by papers themselves throughout their lives. Although the VOCs from papers may bring mild discomfort to readers, they are considered as very important factors that feature the degradation of papers and show potential applications in cultural relic appraisal. In this study, an analytical approach based on solid phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS) was proposed for the evaluation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by Chinese traditional handmade papers. The VOCs evaluations and artificial aging processes were both applied to recent-made papers and naturally aged papers from a traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting scroll (collected by the National Museum of China). To be noticed, a large number of aliphatic acids, aldehydes, ketones, furan derivatives, benzene series and terpenoid substances indicated that the VOCs signals not only reveal the degradation of paper but also tentatively reflect the storage environment along hundreds of years ago. The semi-quantitative evaluation of markers indicated that the historical paper is under a serious degradation due to the high capacity it releases. Our results provided a path way to get the degradation information of ancient paintings as well as potential realistic applications such as the conservation of paper-based relics and the environmental protection in libraries and museums.
Highlights
Paper, since invented thousands of years ago, have been considered as the vehicle of both knowledge and history of human civilizations
Our research aims to establish a list of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from Chinese handmade papers as well as sorting out the degradation marker molecules
Solid phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS) has been applied and proved to be useful to evaluate volatile organic components (VOCs) emitted from the Chinese traditional handmade papers
Summary
Since invented thousands of years ago, have been considered as the vehicle of both knowledge and history of human civilizations. No-invasive evaluation technologies such as pH, chromaticity, vibrational spectrometry is more acceptable in practical work especially for historical relics [1, 2] while these approaches can only provide either surficial information or functional group information [3,4,5,6]. Py-GC/MS (Pyrolysis gas chromatographymass spectrometry) as a possible technique involving slight invasion (several micrograms), reflects the materials composition while the pyrolysis products are usually complicated and easy to be interfered. It is still not applicable for quantitative analysis [7,8,9]
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