Qualitative Analysis by Comprehensive 2D GC / TOFMS[1]: Comparison of kerosene and diesel oil
Introduction
Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) is a kind of continuous heart-cut GC system. Two different types of columns are connected via a modulator in the same GC oven. By using the two columns together, this technique provides very high separation capabilities when compared to one-dimensional GC analysis. However, GC×GC systems require a fast data acquisition detection system in order to record the very narrow time width peaks observed in the GC chromatograms. The JEOL AccuTOF-GC is a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) that fully meets this high speed data acquisition requirement at 25Hz (0.04sec) so it can be successfully used as the detection system in combination with GC×GC.
In this work, the AccuTOF-GC was used to analyze kerosene and diesel oil samples by GC×GC -TOFMS.
Results and Discussion
All of the chromatograms were created by using the GC Image software (Zoex). The GC×GC total ion current chromatograms (TICCs) for kerosene (top) and diesel oil (bottom) are shown in Fig.1. The X axis corresponds with the separation by the 1st column which is based on differences in boiling point, and the Y axis corresponds with the separation by the 2nd column which is based on differences in polarity. Also, the color in the chromatograms represents the intensity of each peak. The intensity increases from light blue to yellow and then to red. The red color shows that the compound intensity is over the settings value for the maximum intensity.