The use of activiated carbon for sampling industrial environs

This paper describes techniques employed at a large semiconductor manufacturing plant to analyze for organic contaminants in production areas. Activated carbon was employed in the sampling procedure as the collection medium. Vapors of a number of common industrial solvents were absorbed and collected on the activated carbon surface at concentrations in the ppm and sub-ppm range. Analyses of the collected samples, stripped from the carbon surfaces with carbon disulfide, were performed by gas chromatography using a number of different colum packings. Also discussed is work carried out using a gas chromatograph-mass spectometer system to separate and then identify individual constituents. Other related applications of activated carbon sampling are also reported.