Recyclable Sorbent Coating for Organic Pollutant Sampler

IB-903

E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

APPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY:

• Enviromental assessment
• Air pollutant measurement

ADVANTAGES:

• Integrates vapor and particulate sampling in one device
• Directly detect and determine phase distributions

ABSTRACT:

Lara Gundel and colleagues at Berkeley Lab have developed an adsorbent resin for an organic vapor/particle sampler that greatly facilitates the direct determination of both gas and particulate semi-volatile organic air pollutants. These pollutants include non-polar and moderately polar chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides, nicotine, phenols and many other chemicals. The adsorbent resin is applied to annular denuders used in the sampler to trap the gas phase species before the airstream passes through a filter and a backup denuder. Extracts of the denuders and filters are analyzed separately for the semi-volatile species of interest using gas or liquid chromatography. These resin-coated denuders provide the means to directly detect and determine phase distributions of semi-volatile pollutants, compared to current methods that rely on difference calculations or other tech-niques that are subject to large positive and negative artifacts. Pollutant trapping by the sorbent coating is reversible; this recyclable sorbent coating technology can be incorporated into many other pollutant sampling and trapping applications.

STATUS: U.S. Patent #6,780,818. Available for licensing

REFERENCE NUMBER: IB-903