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Last Update: 01/31/00

Identification of the Volatile and Semi-Volatile Organics In Chewing Gums By Direct Thermal Desorption

INTRODUCTION

A wide variety of volatile and semi-volatile organic flavoring chemicals are formulated into consumer brands of chewing gums. These flavoring components consist of many essential oil plant extracts such as peppermint, spearmint and cinnamon, as well as artificial flavoring compounds. In addition, artificial preservatives, as Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) and Butylated Anisole (BHA), are present in the chewing gums. Previous methods for the extraction and analysis of these compounds in chewing gums, plant materials and essential oils used techniques such as solvent extraction (1, 2, 3 & 4), headspace analysis (5 & ,6), and microdistillation (6, 7, 8) followed by capillary gas chromatography are described. These methods either require large sample sizes, the use of solvents or considerable time and effort to achieve the analysis.

A new technique entitled Direct Thermal Desorption (DTD) using a Thermal Desorption apparatus attached to the injection port of the GC/MS system permits the direct thermal extraction of the volatile and semi-volatile organics directly from small samples of chewing gums without the need for solvent extraction or other sample preparation. The technique uses a combination of ballistic heating of the sample and GC carrier gas through and over the sample to thermally extract the organics directly from the small solid gum samples (1 to 10 milligram) and onto the front of the GC column for subsequent analysis via GC and GC/MS instrumentation. The method requires no solvent extraction. The thermal extraction is complete in only 10 minutes. Accurate quantification of BHT and other volatiles in various food products (10) and pharmaceutical products (11) using this technique provided for the detection of organics at levels from 20 ppb to 400 ppm with a relative standard deviation of 5%. This method can be used to identify the active components and flavoring compounds in chewing gum and other flavored food products and herbs. It can also be used to evaluate and select flavoring compounds and essential oils to be used for the production of these products. The GC chromatogram profile can be used for both the qualitative fingerprinting of the flavoring compounds as well as for the quantitative identification of these compounds.

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