Pyrolysis and GC×GC-MS. A hot topic! (Robert Cody, MDCW 2025)

🎤 Presenter: Robert Cody (JEOL USA INC, PEABODY, MA, USA)

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💡 Book in your calendar: 17th Multidimensional Chromatography Workshop (MDCW) 13 - 15. January 2026

Abstract

Thermal desorption and pyrolysis (TD/PY) is a valuable sample introduction method for materials analysis with combined gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Polymers can be identified by their characteristic pyrograms, and a database is available for the major pyrolysis products. However, pyrolysis produces much more complex mixtures than can be separated by one-dimensional gas chromatography alone!

Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry (GC×GC-MS) is a useful approach to monitor pyrolysis reactions on a small scale and characterize the products of pilot-plant pyrolysis. High-resolution mass spectrometry and soft ionization methods (chemical ionization, photoionization, and field ionization) are essential tools for the identification of unknowns in these complex mixtures. To view things from a completely different perspective, soft ionization and pyrolysis with a deactivated fused silica column that provides no GC separation shows high-molecular-weight pyrolysis products that are not detectable by GC-MS or GC×GC-MS.