3.4. Identification of polystyrene in polluted samples
In order to investigate if NAM-IR could identify components of interest in polluted samples, a sequence of experiments was performed, in which solutions of polystyrene (PS) latex beads were spiked with increasingly concentrated solutions of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). In this way, the PS samples were polluted in a controlled manner, with a component known to have IR absorption peaks in the same region as PS.