Cold vapour desorption of volatile organic compounds from an adsorbent trap

A computer simulation of active adsorbent sampling was used to investigate the possibility of effecting desorption of volatile organic compounds from an adsorbent trap both rapidly and efficiently via competitive adsorption with a concentrated solvent vapour. The simulation was then enacted in an experimental system to test the concept which used ion mobility spectrometry to follow the desorption of trapped pentan-2-one from a Tenax adsorbent bed, that was subjected to cold vapour desorption. The ion mobility spectra obtained indicated that pentan-2-one was rapidly released from the adsorbent trap with an accompanying enrichment of at least 600%. Desorption by the solvent vapour was shown to have an efficiency of greater than 99.8% in comparison to a thermal desorption method.