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 both immersive extraction from liquids, or headspace sampling from solids.

“HiSorb will especially appeal to existing TD users looking to extend their capabilities”, says HiSorb Product Manager Dr Lara Kelly. “There are many applications of this technology, 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 using the probes is much easier than the labour-intensive manipulations typically needed with traditional liquid–liquid solvent extraction methods: “The design of the HiSorb probes makes them easy to manipulate, and 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.

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