Organic

Organic chemistry is defined as the chemistry of carbon and its compounds. Organic chemistry and analytical methods have come a long way since Friedrich Wöhler’s accidental synthesis of urea in 1828. In fact, organic compounds are normally present in the environment as contaminants from industrial sources, with over one million synthetic organic compounds in existence. To detect organic compounds in soil, water, oil, air, vegetation and biota, Testmark utilizes the latest instrumentation to effect organic testing, which is typically based on chromatographic techniques. Gas and liquid chromatographs are used to separate molecules one from another, while specialized detection systems are used to detect the separated compounds. We use common detection systems like flame ionization detection (FID) for the quantification and identification of petrogenic compounds found in diesel and gasoline. For other separations, hyphenated techniques like mass spectrometry are used. The mass spectrometer allows for molecules to be identified by their mass spectrum. The mass spectrum for molecules is often unique to a molecule much like your fingerprint is unique to you. In the determination of organic compounds, the method must be reliable and provide unambiguous information about the sample. For the determination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including BTEX we utilizes purge and trap/gas chromatography mass spectrometry (P&T/GC/MS).