Determination of the softening point of rosin by a simple and automated headspace gas chromatographic technique.

We report a simple and automated headspace gas chromatographic technique for the determination of the softening point of rosin. A lumpy solid of rosin is added into a headspace vial, then an automated stepwise temperature ramping and headspace sampling was performed at each temperature stage and gas chromatography measurement. By plotting the gas chromatography signal for an impurity in rosin versus the temperature, a transition point (corresponding to the rosin softening point) was determined. The results show that the present method has a good precision (<0.76%), and good accuracy (the relative differences compared to the ring and ball method was <4.0%). The present method is simple, accurate, and automated. It is practical and suitable for testing the softening of rosin and derivatives in mills.