Testing site Polymer Materials Analytics

The testing site „Polymer Materials Analytics„ (PW) is competent under the terms of DIN EN ISO/IEC 17025 to carry out ‎chemical tests of polymer material used in the pharmaceutical and food sector as well as chemical test of materials for ‎contamination with PAH.‎

The testing site „Polymer Materials Analytics“ (PW)  is concerned with organic trace analysis in rubber articles and articles of daily use on the basis of polymer materials. One focus is leachalbes/extractables analysis. Many polymer materials emit small amounts of additives needed for achieving certain physical and chemical properties when they are in contact with liquid media as for example drinking water or pharmaceuticals. Such additives are for example plasticizers, processing aids and anti-oxidants. Depending on the kind of polymer material and the liquid medium to which it is exposed a migration of the additives into the liquid medium takes places. Typical migrating additives from the group of plasticizers are phthalates while fatty acids are representative leachables of processing aids and substituted phenols of anti-oxidants. By means of High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) leachables/extractables with middle to high molecular weights can be analysed qualitatively and quantitatively down to the lower ppm range. By coupling of HPLC with a mass spectrometric detector a direct identification of substances is possible. A routine technique for identification of leachables/extractables with lower molecular weights is gaschromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). As containers, tubes, packagings or filters made of polymer materials get an increasing significance in the pharmaceutical and food industry due to their outstanding practical and chemical properties and have to meet particularly high demands concerning purity and compatibility, the area of leachables/extractables analysis is an important instrument for their quality assurance.

We offer the following tests:

Testing of polymer materials from the pharmaceutical and food sector:

• Extraction/Migration in various media in accordance with in-house method and in accordance with DIN EN 12873 ‎for migration into drinking water (test according to the elastomer guideline)‎
• Sample preparation by liquid-liquid extraction and solid phase extraction
• HPLC-UV (DAD) and HPLC-UV-MS analysis of polymer extracts for the identification and quantification of ‎extracted, including thermally labile components such as antioxidants/stabilizers and their degradation products, ‎cross-linking reagents, plasticizers, processing aids
• GC-MS analysis of polymer extracts for the identification and quantification of evaporable and low molecular ‎weight, extracted components complementary to the HPLC-UV (MS) analysis
• Preparation of migration waters und identification as well as quantification of water leachable organic substances ‎using GC-MS according to DIN EN 15768 (test according to the elastomer guideline)‎
• Headspace GC-MS analysis of polymers and polymer extracts for the identification and quantification of volatile ‎constituents
• Determination of the non-volatile residue
• FT-IR analysis of extract residues for the identification of main substance groups

Testing for PAH-contamination of materials

• Determination of PAH in carbon black according to ASTM 7771a / ASTM 8143‎
• Determination of PAH in oils according to DIN EN 16143
• Determination of PAH in polymers according to AfPS GS 2019:01 PAK

Further information

Information for quality management and accreditation of DIK can be found here.