Markes International enhances its suite of thermal desorption products with new sorptive extraction technology

Markes International (Llantrisant, UK) has announced the launch of a new? technology for high-capacity sorptive extraction of organic chemicals from liquids and solids.

The new HiSorb™ product range includes probes and accessories that sorptively extract volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs) for analysis by thermal desorption (TD)–GC–MS. They can be used ?for immersive or headspace sampling of liquids, as well as headspace sampling of solids.

“HiSorb will appeal to anyone analysing liquids and solids who wants to benefit from the well-known advantages of TD for air analysis – namely outstanding sensitivity, wide analyte range, easy automation and options for sample re-collection and repeat analysis", says Dr Lara Kelly, HiSorb Product Manager.

“There are many applications of HiSorb, but a key focus for us at the moment is profiling of beverages, foods, and fragranced products. To this end, we’ve already conducted a number of challenging real-world applications including analysis of flavour compounds in coffee, whisky and milk.”

Dr Kelly says that the volume of PDMS sorbent on the HiSorb probes is considerably greater than on SPME fibres, which are currently widely used in the field of aroma and fragrance profiling. In addition to the resulting sensitivity advantage, she points out that sorptive extraction with HiSorb is much easier than traditional liquid–liquid solvent extraction methods, which typically require labour-intensive manipulations: “The design of the HiSorb probes, and the fact that they ?are desorbed in industry-standard TD tubes, makes them? really easy to use?. In combination with Markes’ instruments for automated TD, they offer the potential for considerably improving laboratory throughput.”

As well as a range of HiSorb probes and crimped caps for headspace vials, Markes is also offering the HiSorb Agitator, which can agitate and warm up to 16 vials simultaneously, to optimise extraction of VOCs and SVOCs.

HiSorb has been developed with Welsh Government ‘SMART Cymru’ funding.

For further information click here.