Afternoon all! I'm currently involved in planning some studies to analyse degradation of process solvents under plant conditions - in particular the effect, if any, of NO, NO2 and SO2 at high temperatures. Plan is to analyse solvent samples by headspace GC-MS (I'm not altogether convinced it will be possible to pick up small VOCs like formaldehyde/acetaldehyde without derivatisation, but we have to start somewhere and the less sample preparation the better). Conditions would be along the lines of: Agilent 5977b instrument, H2 carrier gas and HP PLOT U column or similar. I have access to a FID and TCD if the small molecules prove too small for the MS.

My concern is that this will likely involve exposing the GC to possibly quite significant concentrations of residual NOx and SOx - especially the SO2 worries me due to potential formation of sulfuric acid in conjunction with water vapour from the samples... What are your thoughts on whether these are likely to harm the column and/or the analyses? Are there any commonly-used ways to scrub them out without losing the other volatiles at the same time?