Phenolic resins for can coatings: II. Resoles based on cresol/phenol mixtures or tert. butyl phenol

The composition of two resoles based on cresol/phenol mixtures and of a resole manufactured from tert. butyl phenol were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS), comprehensive GC×GC, normal phase HPLC (NPLC) in combination with GC–MS and size exclusion chromatography (SEC). The cresol/phenol resin 2 contained perhaps 5000 components almost exclusively with methylene linkages between the rings. The resole from tert. butyl phenol largely consisted of components with 1–3 rings, about half of the linkages consisting of mono-methylene ether bridges. Comprehensive GC×GC provided the best picture of the sample composition, but the combination of NPLC with GC enables the most complete analysis.