Key Features & Specifications
TC-20 As a Multi-Tube Conditioning Unit
Sorbent tubes require stringent conditioning - often for several hours - whenever they are:
Freshly packed with sorbent.
Stored without being properly capped.
Heavily contaminated during a sampling procedure.
Required for trace level monitoring.
Some commercial thermal desorbers, like UNITY, ULTRA 50:50 and AutoSecure offer a dedicated tube conditioning mode. However this can lead to valuable analytical instrument capacity being used simply to clean sorbent tubes.
TC-20 as a dry purge unit
Dry purging is used to remove excess water from a batch of sampled sorbent tubes. Dry purging is particularly important when hydrophilic sorbents have been
used and eliminates the adverse effects water would otherwise have on MS, ECD and FID detectors. It also extends GC column lifetimes.
The TC-20 is used to pass clean, dry carrier gas through up to 20 sorbent tubes simultaneously. Tubes are inserted such that dry gas passes through them in
the sampling direction at ambient temperature. As above, less than 20 tubes can be dry purged without needing to block off empty tube positions.