NIST Polymer Pyrolysis Search: A new pyrolysis GC-MS search program and mass spectral reference library

Published

June 29, 2026

Author(s)

Edward Erisman, Yamil Simon, William Wallace

Abstract

Pyrolysis is the thermal decomposition of a material in an inert environment and is used in combination with GC-MS (Py-GC/MS) for analyzing the chemical composition of a wide variety of materials. The identification and deconvolution of polymers and polymer mixtures using a searchable mass spectral library of individual pyrolysis products (pyrolyzates) is presented. It is demonstrated that this method can successfully identify components in a mixture of polyolefins, a polymer within a complex biological matrix (with a pre-pyrolysis in-situ hydrolysis and methylation step), and copolymers from their individual polymers. The resulting interactive, freely-available search software application and pyrolysis reference library is described.

Citation

ACS Environmental Science and Technology

Volume

60

Issue

27

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c18872

Local Download

Keywords

Py-GC/MS, mass spectral reference library, microplastics, nanoplastics, pyrolysis

Citation

Erisman, E. , Simon, Y. and Wallace, W. (2026), NIST Polymer Pyrolysis Search: A new pyrolysis GC-MS search program and mass spectral reference library, ACS Environmental Science and Technology, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c18872, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960873 (Accessed August 1, 2026)

Additional citation formats