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Materials and products such as plastics, paints, coatings and pigments can release unwanted and troublesome chemical compounds under the different conditions during use or processing.
CURRENTA Analytics can help you identify these chemical compounds. Using different analytical systems. Various conditions can be simulated to detect volatile organic compounds (VOC). These systems include thermal desorption and headspace, coupled with a mass spectrometer. Also, CURRENTA Analytics offers tests in accordance with the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).
Quantitative determination of formaldehyde.
The test is based on the modified bottle method.
In this test, specimens of a specific mass and dimensions are placed over distilled water in a sealed bottle and stored at a constant temperature for a set period of time. The amount of formaldehyde released into the water is quantified using suitable analytical methods. CURRENTA Analytics use e.g. quantitative LC-MS for this. The amount of formaldehyde measured is based on the dry specimen weight (mg/kg).
Determination of organic compound emissions.
CURRENTA Analytics use VDA 277 to test the emission of non-metallic automotive materials for total carbon emissions. We store the crushed sample in a sealed gas volume and then analyze the emission using headspace gas chromatography. The results are expressed in μg of carbon per gram of the sample.
In contrast to VDA 278, VDA 277 does not identify the individual VOCs using mass spectrometric detection – instead, only one sum parameter is measured using GC-FID.
Thermal desorption analysis of organic emissions for characterizing non-metallic automotive materials.
We use this analytical method to detect emissions from non-metallic materials used in automotive molded parts. We estimate the volatile organic compound (VOC value) and the condensable substance (FOG value) by the determination of two semi-quantitative total values. During the analysis, the samples are thermally extracted, then the emissions are separated using gas chromatography and detected using mass spectrometry.
Often, we use the combination of thermal desorption and GCMS (VDA 278 or a modified version) to identify damage to plastic components. We can detect even very little amounts of impurities with this highly sensitive measuring method.
