A COMPARISON OF PRODUCTS FROM AN AIR ATMOSPHERE TUBE FURNACE WITH A VACUUM CURIE-POINT PYROLYZER - IMPLICATIONS FOR BIODETECTION

Several bacteria and biomaterials have been pyrolyzed using a vacuum Curie-point pyrolysis mass spectrometer and a resistively heated tube furnace with an air atmosphere connected to a mass spectrometer. The comparison of the resulting spectra showed that the two types of thermal decomposition were surprisingly similar. Compounds that should be susceptible to oxidation, such as nucleic acids, nucleosides, squalene, and ubiquinone, produced similar pyrolysis mass spectra from the two pyrolysis techniques. A number of daughter ion experiments were conducted to verify that the major products being produced in the two experiments were the same. Minor differences were observed in the relative concentrations of the products from the different pyrolysis methods.