Rapid determination of moisture content in paper materials by multiple headspace extraction gas chromatography

•Rapid determination of moisture content in paper materials.•The method is based on multiple headspace extraction gas chromatography.•The present method is efficient, accurate, and suitable for the determination of the moisture content in various paper materials.

This paper describes a new method for the rapid determination of the moisture content in paper materials. The method is based on multiple headspace extraction gas chromatography (MHE-GC) at a temperature above the boiling point of water, from which an integrated water loss from the tested sample due to evaporation can be measured and from which the moisture content in the sample can be determined. The results show that the new method has a good precision (with the relative standard deviation <0.96%), high sensitivity (the limit of quantitation = 0.005%) and good accuracy (the relative differences <1.4%). Therefore, the method is quite suitable for many uses in research and industrial applications.