[Taitong Academy] Do adsorbent tubes need to be activated before use, and what are the effects of non-activation on use and testing?

In the long road of environmental testing, all kinds of precision instruments and tools play a vital role. Among them, the adsorbent tube as a key component in the testing process, its correct use or not is directly related to the accuracy and reliability of the test results. So, do adsorbent tubes need to be activated before use? If not, what will be the impact on our use and testing? In this issue, let's discuss this topic in depth.

1、Do adsorbent tubes need to be activated before use?

The answer is that it is required. Sorbent tubes usually need to be activated before use.

The need for activation

The adsorbent in the adsorbent tube may adsorb some impurities and moisture during production, storage and transportation. Activation treatment can remove these impurities and moisture, restore the adsorption performance of the adsorbent, and ensure that it can accurately and efficiently adsorb the target substance when it is used.

2、What are the effects of non-activation?

Reduced adsorption efficiency

If the adsorbent tube is not activated, impurities and moisture in it will occupy some of the adsorption sites of the adsorbent, making the adsorption of the target substance less effective. For example, when detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air, low concentrations of the target substances may not be adequately adsorbed, resulting in low detection results. Impurities may also compete with the target substance for adsorption, further reducing the adsorption efficiency.

Impact on detection accuracy

Unactivated adsorbent tubes may adsorb non-target substances, which may be released during subsequent thermal desorption or analysis, interfering with the detection of the target substances and thus affecting the accuracy of the results.

For example, in the detection of specific VOCs, impurities in the adsorbent tubes may produce interference peaks, which may bias the analytical results.

Shortened service life

Since unactivated tubes adsorb more impurities, they become saturated faster, which shortens their service life. This means that the tubes need to be replaced more frequently, increasing the cost of the test.

To ensure the accuracy of the results and the service life of the tubes, it is essential to activate the tubes before using them.

About Taito Technology and its products

Established in 2017, Taitong Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd (“Taitong Technology”) is a national high-tech enterprise specializing in the design, research and development, production, sales and service of precision instruments. The company has passed ISO9001:2015 quality management and ISO14001:2015 environmental management system certifications, and has been recognized as a “Specialized, Specialized, Specialized and New” enterprise in Guangdong Province in 2022.
       Taitong products focus on the pre-treatment of VOC samples in solid, liquid and gas, and can be applied to a variety of substrates and scenarios. Our products include: automatic thermal desorber, automatic headspace injector, automatic purge and trap, atmospheric preconcentration system, rapid solvent extraction, automatic gas injector and other standardized products. Applications include: environment, food, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, packaging, chemical industry, water, disease control, materials and so on. After years of technology accumulation, we have now obtained nearly thirty national technology patents and software copyrights. In addition, Taitong Technology has strong R & D strength, can be exclusively customized a variety of different pre-treatment equipment to meet the majority of scientific research teachers different experimental needs.

Fully automatic thermal desorber is a self-contained electronic cold trap, the gas path using a combination of electric six-way valves, eight-way valves and solenoid valves, can be programmed to automatically complete the adsorption tube of the primary desorption of the cold trap enriched, the secondary desorption, the injection and blowback of the four processes, the cold trap temperature, the primary desorption temperature, the secondary desorption temperature and the line heating temperature can be set independently, and the output of the synchronization signal in the injection can be started at the same time as the chromatography and the workstation at the same time.
Fully automatic thermal resolver fully embodies the advanced pretreatment technology and strong strength, as an advanced thermal resolver equipped with: secondary resolution function, dehumidification function automatic leakage detection, electronic pressure control and other functions, instantaneous resolution of the technology, semiconductor condensation to -40 ° C, all the technology to effectively protect the GC, and greatly improve the efficiency of the resolution. Adopt advanced inert heating transfer pipeline design, does not occupy the chromatographic injection port. Users can change the injection mode when needed. 24/48/50/100 sample positions, carousel autosampling design, so you can easily deal with the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

AutoTP-93 Automatic Purge Trap is a 93-position fully automatic purge trap for 40ml VOA sample bottles with electronic cold trap. It adopts high-precision syringe pump for precise sampling, and uses helium/nitrogen as the purge gas, and passes the purge tube into the sample solution to bubble; under the continuous airflow purge, the volatile components in the sample will escape with the purge gas and be concentrated through a trapping device equipped with adsorbent; after a certain period of the purge time, the purge gas is turned off, and the six-way valve is switched to connect the trapping tube to the carrier gas line of the GC, and at the same time, the trapping tube is rapidly heated so that the trapped sample components will be desorbed and enter the GC with the carrier gas. The captured sample components are desorbed and enter the GC with the carrier gas for analysis. Through the combination with GC or GC/MS, it can be widely used in environmental analysis, such as the analysis of organic pollutants in drinking water or wastewater, and can also be used for the analysis of volatiles (such as odor components) in food.

ATHH-12 full-automatic activation instrument is the supporting equipment of thermal resolution (thermal desorption) instrument, used for adsorption tube in high temperature conditions through the inert gas blowing, to protect the adsorption tube packing at the same time will be adsorbed in the packing on the release of volatile organic compounds, to get the background clean sampling tube, and then go to the control site sampling, to ensure the accuracy of the experimental data.
Principle: Under high temperature and certain inert gas flow to adsorption tube residue blowing out, so that the adsorption tube to get reborn, the adsorption tube can be reused, cost savings.

Automatic headspace injector is a convenient and fast sample pretreatment method in gas chromatography. Its principle is to put the sample to be tested into a closed container, make the volatile components evaporate from the sample matrix by heating up the temperature, and reach the equilibrium in the two phases of gas-liquid (or gas-solid), and then extract the top gas for chromatographic analysis directly to check the composition and contents of volatile components in the sample. The use of headspace injection method can eliminate the lengthy and cumbersome sample pre-treatment process, avoid the interference of organic solvents on the analysis, and reduce the contamination of the chromatographic column and injection port.

The GS series gas autosampler is a device for direct injection of gas samples. Equipped with multiple sample selector valves, automatic sampling system, multiple inlet valves and dosing ring to realize the sample sampling and injection function. It is widely used for direct injection of gaseous samples with gas chromatography or other detection equipment.

Atmospheric pre-concentration system can be Suma canisters, sampling bags, sampling bottles and other sampling devices in the air samples into the sample and low-temperature concentration of aggregation, can be effective on the air samples of polar (aldehydes, alcohols, esters, ketones, ethers) and nonpolar, reactive sulfur, nitrogen compounds, and other organic compounds concentration analysis, and effective removal of gas samples in the H2O, 02, CO2, N2 and other gases.

The ATC-150 is a highly efficient and intelligent multi-functional sample pre-treatment product. It can realize the functions of liquid injection, headspace injection, solid phase microextraction injection and standard sample configuration. It eliminates the cumbersome sample pre-treatment process and effectively improves the working efficiency. Provide the upper computer control program, you can directly operate the autosampler on the computer, using the instrument is more convenient.

The High Performance Concentration Analyzer can be used to analyze VOC, VOCS, and SVOC adsorption samples to meet a wide range of testing needs. Fully automated, it can process 24 - 50 samples at a time, and can be connected to GC, GCMS, laser mid-infrared spectrometry and other analytical equipment for excellent compatibility. It can analyze large-capacity sampling tubes with up to 1500mg filler, especially suitable for ultra-low concentration and high flow rate enrichment sampling. With ultra-low temperature enrichment system, the temperature range is from -150 degrees to room temperature. Adopts 3 solvent extraction adding methods, through the electronic flow control adding speed and volume, to realize the solvent vapor extraction of samples. High-temperature assisted desorption from -150 to 500 degrees Celsius. Two kinds of internal standard gases can be added automatically to improve the accuracy of analysis. Intelligent Internet of Things control terminal, support a variety of remote monitoring and operation, so you can keep track of the analysis progress. Sample Boiling Point Fraction Sorting and Sampling Function is also available as an option.

The fully automated thermal lyser is equipped with a 30-bit autosampler and a liquid standard closed injection system, which can be used for instantaneous lysis injection, multi-hit lysis injection, desorption injection, etc. It also supports IOT on-line and remote control. In the sampling system, the 30-bit autosampler is equipped with 50ul and 100ul sample cups, and can be automatically recovered, with an advanced, stable and reliable structure. The cracking system is equipped with multi-strike cracking function, which can automatically realize multi-order temperature cracking products and trap the sample for the development of cracking characterization method of materials; the current rapid heating system is from room temperature to 1000 degrees, with a heating rate of 5000 degrees / minute, and there are also automatic evaporation of sample water and surface VOC blowback function. Cold trap systems are diverse, liquid nitrogen refrigeration can be ultra-low temperature enrichment to -190 ℃ to meet the full-component analysis experiments; semiconductor refrigeration low-temperature enrichment to -40 ℃ to meet the multi-component, low-content, boiling point spanning a large analytical experiments; air-cooled ambient enrichment to meet the analysis of fewer components.

The activated sampling tube is inserted into the preparation hole, and a certain volume of standard solution is injected precisely using a microfeeding needle. A key to start the preparation program automatically passes a constant flow rate of inert gas, simulating the atmospheric sampling process, the components to be measured in the standard solution are adsorbed in the packing of the sampling tube, and the solvent in the standard solution is drained, completing the preparation process.The flow rate and preparation time of the ZB-1 automatic standard preparation instrument can be set, and after the end of the preparation, it will automatically shut off the carrier gas.

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