Analysis of Petroleum Products Using Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography (GCxGC) with Both Time-of-Flight MS and Flame Ionization Detectors

Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) has proven to be an extremely valuable analytical technique for the petroleum industry due to its ability to substantially increase the chromatographic peak capacity beyond that of traditional single-dimension gas chromatography. Pairing GC×GC with Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOFMS) provides unsurpassed characterization capabilities due to the separation power of GC×GC and the ability of TOFMS to provide rich data to deconvolution algorithms, which help unravel the complexity of difficult petroleum matrices. Petrochemical labs also often utilize flame ionization detectors (FID) for GC×GC to provide quantitative results via area percent calculations.