| Abstract: | Pyrolysis gas chromatography (P/GC) has been successful in differentiating coal tar pitches which are used in the manufacture of high temperature graphite materials [1,2]. In the present study, coal tar and petroleum pitches received from five suppliers were readily differentiated using three distinct methods of polymer analysis: dynamic headspace and pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (DH/GC/MS and P/GC/MS, [3]), and pyrolysis mass spectrometry (P/MS, [4,5]). All of these methods are appropriate for the analysis and pattern recognition study of coal and petroleum products; however, methods which incorporate GC usually necessitate long analysis times and are subject to problems associated with gas chromatographic reproducibility (e.g. active sites [6], and nonconstant retention times). As a fingerprint analysis method, P/MS is rapid and ideally suited to computerized pattern recognition study of pitches due to the simple format of P/MS data (computer tabulation of normalized intensities versus masses); whereas, in the present study, the normalized peak area versus retention time date from DH/GC/MS and P/GC/MS analyses were not suitable for direct input to a computerized pattern recognition analysis program, (due to non-constant retention times and improper data format). One limitation is that P/MS does not provide positive identification of thermally evolved products (as can DH/GC/MS and P/GC/MS) due to the complexity of the spectra of a mixture of compounds produced by P/MS. Within the limits of the commercial instrumentation and computer programs used in this study, a combination of all three techniques provided the greatest capability for the differentiation of the five coal tar and petroleum based pitches studied. |
