Practical Examples of Two-Dimensional Chromatography

It is through observing examples of actual applications that the best understanding of GC-GC separation principles can be achieved. Over the past 30 years, there have been essentially three main areas where two-dimensional gas chromatography has been applied  

Multidimensional techniques are used extensively in all of these areas, with GC-GC being only one of the many commonly used hyphenated methods. Reviews of each of these application areas is discussed in greater detail in Chapters 10, 13 and 14. The remaining sections of this present chapter, however, will use some selected GC-GC applications to demonstrate how such techniques in particular have been applied in practice. 

What is common to all of these areas is that the relevant number of published GC-GC papers is very small when compared to those concerning single-column and GC-MS methods. While approximately 1000 papers per year are currently published on single-column GC methods and, in recent years, nearly 750 per year on GC-MS techniques, only around 50 per annum have been produced on two-dimensional GC. Of course, this may not be a true reflection of the extent to which two-dimensional GC is utilized, but it is certainly the case that research interest in its application is very much secondary to that of mass spectrometric couplings. A number of the subject areas where two-dimensional methods have been applied do highlight the limitations that exist in single-column and MS-separation analysis. 

A large amount of fuel and environmentally based analysis is focused on the determination of aliphatic and aromatic content. These types of species are often notoriously difficult to deconvolute by mass spectrometric means, and resolution at the isomeric level is almost only possible by using chromatographic methods. Similarly, the areas of organohalogen and flavours/fragrance analysis are dominated by a need to often quantify chiral compounds, which in the same way as aliphatic 

1 PETROLEUM, FUELS, FEEDSTOCKS AND COMBUSTION ANALYSIS METHODOLOGIES 

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