Introduction

Polymers are currently used as thermoplastic resins (general-purpose resins, engineering plastics, and super engineering plastics) and thermosetting resins for livingware, food containers, industrial products, and medical supplies. These are synthesized as a resin having properties and performance according to the purpose of use, and various additives contained in the resin are also crucial for improving the performance and adding new properties. Many of the additives are used for the purpose of antioxidants, ultraviolet absorbers, light stabilizers, thermal-degradation inhibitors, plasticizers, and so on. Several types of additives are often used in a product, and it is necessary to analyze the effect of amount and combination of additives, and figure out the time-dependent change, decomposition, and mechanism of action in polymers.

In order to figure out them, plenty of time, effort, and ingenuity are required over the sample pretreatment, separation analysis, and molecular structural analysis by spectroscopy. The measurement method that connects pretreatment and separation analysis online can be expected to improve the efficiency and precision of analysis including sample pretreatment.

We have developed an Online SFE-SFC/HPLC Extraction and Chromatography System (EX-Chromato System) which can be combined SFE or solvent extraction (under controlled pressure and temperature) with SFC or HPLC in one system and reported applications about the measurements of ingredients in natural and medical products using this system^{1, 2}). In this presentation, we applied the EX-Chromato System to analysis of several additives in polymer samples and investigated the online measurement method combining sample pretreatment by SFE with HPLC analysis.

Keywords

SFC, SFE, HPLC, supercritical fluid extraction, supercritical fluid chromatography, polymers, solvent extraction