MAXIMUS TGA-FTIR-GC/MS Interface

Hyphenating TG-IR-GC/MS is the most powerful and complete approach to material deformulation. The specialist will be able to capture many different information from each instrument. This will lead to characterize deeply an unknown mixture to determine its primary components and identify additives or contaminants. This information may be needed, for example, to evaluate a competitor’s product or to determine compliance with regulations. Due to thermal degradation of the sample, the gases produced in the TGA furnace are transferred  to the FTIR gas cell thanks to a hot interface. Here a spectral analysis takes place. Then hot gases will be further flowed to GC for chromatographic separation and to the MS detector for unambiguous identification. The GC/MS injection block was designed to avoid capillary cloggings, carry over and cold spots which could affect the analysis. The system allows real-time analysis thanks to the GC instrument which can separate and detect very low levels of material in complex and unknown mixtures.
The system is configured for Active Flow Principle, ensuring the same mass of gases flowing in the FTIR cell and GC-valve over all time of the thermal experiment.

• Active flow technology: real quantitative analysis with no FTIR signals overlapping;
• Heated gas cell and SilcoSteel® transferlines up to 350 °C;
• FTIR Zero gravity cell design: no more fouling or dirtiness phenomena;
• Customized adapter for every TGA model and automatic triggering;
• Triggered GC injection valve heated up to 350 °C;
• SRA Kinetic software directly controls Agilent Cary 630 FTIR: time resolution analysis and live quantitative data.

• TGA-FTIR-MS – Time-based analysis:
  No-more carry over: the sample is introduced into the MS in a non-continuous way; it is possible to set an injection sequence for the introduction of the sole fractions of interest, thus limiting the risks of system fouling (loop wash, loop load)
• TGA-FTIR-GCMS – Separative analysis:
  The gas sample is transferred to the injection block only during the TGA analysis. It is possible to set the introduction of the sample fractions at constant time intervals or at variable time intervals following the progress of the TGA experiment. The gases evolved into TGA are transferred to FTIR and then directly to the GC/MS system for the selective determination of the various compounds.

The SRA Kinetic software is a user-friendly software developed to manage real time monitoring analysis for the Agilent Cary 630 FTIR. The acquisition parameters are saved in a single method, and spectra are saved in a single file for post-processing. During the experiment the specialist can display two overlaid spectra and monitors the trend of two spectral areas of interest with the possibility to have a 3D view of spectra over time. SRA Kinetic is compatible with TGA triggered acquisitions and let to have real-time quantification of an interested peak.