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Effects of pressure drop on absolute retention matching in comprehensive two‐dimensional gas chromatography
Author(s) -
Shellie Robert,
Marriott Philip,
Morrison Paul,
Mondello Luigi
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of separation science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.72
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1615-9314
pISSN - 1615-9306
DOI - 10.1002/jssc.200401717
Subject(s) - two dimensional gas , chemistry , gas chromatography , two dimensional chromatography , analytical chemistry (journal) , chromatography , reproducibility , time of flight mass spectrometry , mass spectrometry , helium , transfer line , ion , organic chemistry , ionization , industrial engineering , engineering
Comprehensive two‐dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) analysis has the capability to resolve many more components of complex mixtures than traditional single column GC analysis. There is an increasing need to provide reliable identification of these separated components; time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS) is the most appropriate technology to achieve this task. Rather than require MS for all GC×GC separations, it is desirable to assign peak identities to specific peak positions in the GC×GC separation space, and this necessitates matching peak retentions in the two experiments – GC×GC‐FID and GC×GC‐TOFMS. The atmospheric vs. vacuum outlet conditions confound this task. It is shown here that by employing a supplementary gas supply, provided to a T‐union between the column outlet and the MS interface, it is possible to generate 2D chromatograms for GC×GC‐FID and GC×GC‐TOFMS that are essentially exactly matched. There is no degradation in separation performance or efficiency in the second column in the system interfaced to the T‐union. Since the GC×GC‐FID experiment uses hydrogen for maximum efficiency, and GC×GC‐TOFMS uses helium carrier, translation of (conditions/retentions) must account for the different viscosities of the carrier gases. Translation of conditions is based on well‐known principles established in single column analysis. Tabulated data illustrate that retention reproducibility was of the order of better than 4 s for the average first dimension retention difference, and about 40 ms for the average second dimension retention difference when comparing GC×GC‐FID and GC×GC‐TOFMS results. This should provide considerable support for identification in routine GC×GC‐FID analysis of specific sample types, once the peaks in 2D separation space have been assigned identities through GC×GC‐TOFMS analysis.