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 w ith a concentrated solvent vapour. The simulation was then enacted in an ex perimental 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 ob tained indicated that pentan-2-one was rapidly released from the adsorbent trap with an accompanying enrichment of at least 600%. Desorption by the so lvent vapour was shown to have an efficiency of greater than 99.8% in compa rison to a thermal desorption method.