Rapid determination of residual formaldehyde in formaldehyde related polymer latexes by headspace gas chromatography

This paper reports on a headspace gas chromatographic method (HS-GC) for the determination of residual formaldehyde in formaldehyde related polymer latexes. The method is based on the reaction between formaldehyde and borohydride in a sodium hydroxide solution (1 mol/L), in which formaldehyde is quantitatively converted to methanol within 30 min at 90 °C and then determined by HS-GC. The results showed that the repeatability of the method had a relative standard deviation of less than 5.0%; the limit of quantification (LOQ) was 17.3 μg, and the recovery ranged from 96.2–102%. The present method is simple, rapid, and accurate.