Charcoal Sampling Tubes for Organic Vapor Analysis by Gas Chromatography

Abstract
Variation in efficiency of recovery of organic vapors collected on activated charcoal and desorbed into carbon disulfide, was studied with respect to certain parameters of the process. Chemicals used were methylethyl ketone, toluene, trichloroethylene, butyl acetate, 2-methylcyclobexanol, and styrene. Analyses were performed with a gas chromatograph. The effects of charcoal mesh size, sampling rate, volume collected, and vapor concentration were considered. Mesh sizes of carbon granules studied were 10/20, 20/30, 30/40, and 40/50. Also, a special vapor adsorption charcoal, 60/80 mesh was used. Effects of sampling rate were determined over a 100 ml/min to 1000 ml/min range. From 0.5 to 1.5 liters of sample were collected for experiments dealing with volume collected. In studying the effect of varying concentration, a range of 1 TLV to 5 TLV was employed.