Pyrolysis-gas chromatographic analyses of organic matter in soils using nitrogen-selective detection

Pyrolysis in combination with gas-chromatographic separation and nitrogen selective detection is proposed for the analysis of nitrogen compounds in soils. The technique is considered as a complementary tool besides other techniques for soil organic matter studies. The pyrolysis probe has been placed directly into the injection port of a HP5890A chromatograph coupled with a nitrogen selective detector. The linearity and reproducibility obtained with this configuration were comparable to those obtained with a FID detection. Also a better sensitivity was observed.