Markes International (Llantrisant, UK) has announced the launch of a new family of thermal desorption instruments for GC–MS at the Analytica 2016 trade show in Munich, Germany.

The new products, which form the ‘xr’ series, incorporate new powerful advances that offer major benefits to analytical laboratories running analyses of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs) in air and materials.

Technological advances in thermal desorption instrument design and performance

These advances include:

• Extended sample re-collection, which widens the scope for automating the re-analysis of individual samples.
• An extended analyte range, allowing the quantitative recovery of C2 to C44 compounds, including reactive and thermally labile species.
• Improved user experience through more modern and robust design and new software platform.

These enhancements are in addition to the many other innovative features that have placed Markes’ thermal desorption products ahead of all others in the field for nearly 20 years.

New series of instruments

The ‘xr’ series comprises TD100-xr, a fully automated thermal desorber for up to 100 sorbent tubes, and a range of modular units that can be combined to provide a customised package for any application –

• UNITY-xr, a thermal desorber for the analysis of single sorbent tubes.
• ULTRA-xr, a 100-tube autosampler for the UNITY-xr.
• Air Server-xr, an eight-channel system for on-line monitoring of air streams, as well as canisters and bags.
• Kori-xr, a water management unit, which allows comprehensive analysis of ultra-volatiles, oxygenates and polar species in humid environments.

Dr Massimo Santoro, Technical Marketing Director of Markes International, says “Our leadership in thermal desorption means that we’re always talking to our many users around the globe. The new ‘xr’ series of thermal desorbers we’re launching at Analytica incorporates a number of their inputs.”

Extended sample re-collection

One feature of the new ‘xr’ series of thermal desorbers is the extended sample re-collection capability, which is now available on all Markes’ instruments. By allowing a sample to be re-analysed, this makes it possible to overcome the historical ‘one-shot’ limitation of other TD instruments; automated sample recollection is now possible on Markes’ tube-based TD100-xr and UNITY-xr instruments as well as their systems for on-line, canister and bag analysis.

Analyse a wider variety of compounds in more challenging samples

Dr. Santoro highlights how these new features have been developed in response to emerging trends in TD–GC–MS analysis: “Our customers are increasingly being asked to analyse a wider variety of compounds in more challenging samples. A prime example is the need to monitor in a single run very volatile species, oxygenates, pinenes, polar and non-polar compounds in humid environments – a challenge that is now addressed by our Kori-xr water-management module for our on-line and canisters systems”.

Monitoring hazardous semi-volatile pollutants in ambient air

The analysis of semi-volatile compounds is also now easier with Markes TD instruments. Santoro points out that “the increased focus on monitoring hazardous semi-volatile pollutants in ambient air, such as PAHs, PCBs and phthalates, has driven us to find optimised approaches specifically for this scenario. Our new ‘xr’ series, with an extended analyte range up to C44, for example when used with our newly developed ‘PAH’ sorbent tubes, allows reliable, automated analysis of these hazardous compounds in air, without the hassle of more classical approaches based on solvent extraction.

Completely redesigned user experience

The user experience has also been at the core of the development of the ‘xr’ series. The adoption of higher precision parts, a more user-friendly, modern product design and a redesigned control software guarantee a very positive user experience. Santoro says “The new software includes a number of pre-built standard methods for easier, quicker implementation in busy laboratories. As with the technical changes to the products themselves, this software update reflects our long-standing desire to help our customers achieve improved performance and productivity at every point in the process of sampling, thermal desorption analysis and data processing”.

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