Automatic evaporation in PCDD/F- and chlorobenzene-routine-analysis

Abstract The usefulness of the Zymark TurboVap 500-evaporator in VDI clean-up procedures for PCDD/Fs and chlorobenzenes was studied. The apparatus performs automatic evaporation of up to 500 ml samples leading to exact 500 μl of residual liquid. There is no need of personal observation of the process. Two samples can be processed parallel. The evaporation is not performed under vacuum. The evaporation times were found in the same range, as determined for conventional rotatory evaporators. The TurboVap 500 produced a 10% decrease of evaporation recovery for toluene and benzene as solvents, compared with a rotavapor. For chlorobenzenes an increase in reproducibility was attained. For PCDD/Fs in hexane/dichloromethane 1:1 (v/v) we obtained the same rates of recovery with the TurboVap 500 as with conventional equipment.