Can I do pyrolysis with in-situ thermally assisted derivatization

Pyrolysis GC MS is widely used technique in the structural analysis of polymeric materials. A major disadvantage of these techniques is their limited applicability for the characterization of most biopolymers. These materials generally yield highly polar pyrolysis products having a poor chromatographic behavior in GC. To overcome this limitation, for the polar biopolymers pyrolysis with in-situ methylation using a strong methyl-donor such as e.g. tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) is now commonly used. This approach is known as thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation (THM) and allows Py-GC analysis of polar polymers otherwise inaccessible for GC-analysis. This can be done in an automated way with the OPTIC inlet.

Please check this Power Point

 

Schematic diagram of THM-procedure: