Differential scanning calorimetry to measure the purity of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

The application of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for purity determination is well documented in literature and is used amongst others in the analysis of pure organic crystalline compounds. The aim of this work is to examine whether the DSC method for purity determination consistently produces values for the purity of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are sufficiently accurate as required for the certification of reference materials. For this purpose, 34 different existing PAH certified reference materials were tested. The DSC results are shown to be consistent with the results obtained by other methods assessing the organic impurities content in PAHs, like gas chromatography (GC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry. Significant differences between the measured values and the certified purity values were observed only in a limited number of cases.