Design considerations and an example of application of an in-house made TG-MS interface

The design, the abilities and a characteristic application of an in-house made interface for combining thermogravimetry (TG) with mass spectrometry (MS) are presented. The TG-MS interface consists mainly of three co-axial tubes. The position of the intermediate tube was determined after calculation of the temperature profile at the TG furnace exit tube. The inner tube position was determined taking into consideration its protection against condensation of heavy molecules and the time delay for the transfer of the evolved gases. This interface allows either continuous sampling and transferring of the evolved gases from the TG to the MS or repetitive introduction of short sampling pulses of TG evolved gases to MS. The interface is capable of coupling various commercial instruments. In the present work two configurations of this interface are demonstrated. Finally an example of application of this interface on forest fuel pyrolysis is presented. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.