Pyrolysis mass spectrometry of resent and fossil biomaterials.

Description

In recent years pyrolysis mass spectrometry (Py-MS) has played an increasingly important role in analytical pyrolysis, which is traditionally dominated by pyrolysis gas chromatographic methods. This tendency first became evident during the Illrd International Symposium on Analytical Pyrolysis held in July 1976 in Amsterdam, and has continued to manifest itself during the 1978 conferences in Budapest (IVth International Symposium on Applied and Analytical Pyrolysis) and Plymouth, New Hampshire (Gordon Conference on Analytical Pyrolysis), and also at international mass spectrometry conferences and in the recently established Journal of Aiialytiaal and Applied Pyrolysis.
Whereas specially designed Py-MS systems using galvanically heated filament or direct probe pyrolysers have been quite successful in structural investigations and kinetic studies involving synthetic polymers and model compounds, Curie-point Py-MS systems have proved to be uniquely advantageous in applications that require maximum reproducibility in fingerprinting and also in applications that require routine analysis of hundreds or thousands of samples. This has made the Curie-point approach especially valuable for extremely complex samples, such as are encountered among materials of biological origin, ranging from biopolymers, cells, microorganisms and tissues to humic substances, sediments, peats, coals and shales.