| Abstract: | A system for purge-and -trap with thermal desorption was developed and optimized to moniotor aroma compounds at ambient temperatures. Canned tomato juice volatiles were used as a model system to develop and evaluate the method. Volatile components were first adsorbed on insert-traps packed with Tenax-TA polymer, then thermally desorbed directly inside a gas chromatograph injector. Volatile matgerials occuring in Very low amounts could be entrained and subsequently chrfomatographed, with sensitivity limited by the purity of the sweep gas. Quantitative measurement of tomato juice volatiles was linear with sample size upn to 100 gram samples. The amount of trapped volatiles was proportional to trapping time; howver, low-and intermediate-boilers broke through the trap after one hour while high-boilers continued to be retained. Apurge gas flow rate of 20ml/min gave optimum results mediate-biolers. Optimum recovery of volatile compounds was obtained with a desorption temperature of 200°c for 5 min. Coefficients of variation from triplicate runs were relatively small. The method showed promise for a simple, sensitive, and reproducibel flavor volatiles collection system for the accurate analysis of tomato compounds. |
