The SRI Thermal Desorber permits volatile and semi-volatile compounds in soil, or other solid matrices, to be injected and analyzed with little or no sample preparation, and with very high sensitivity. With the Thermal Desorber, no solvent extraction is required. This is a major convenience for field operations, and helps save on costs. Little operator skill is needed, and 4-10 analyses can be run per hour, depending on specific requirements.

Because of the large sample size—up to one gram, an analyte present in the soil at 1ppm desorbs 1000 nanograms onto the GC column. This results in detection limits in the ppb range for most compounds. Sandy soil can typically be desorbed with no sample preparation at all. Clay soil is first mixed with sodium sulfate granules to break the clay into a fine powder coating the granules, then the clay and sodium sulfate mix is desorbed.