title: A procedure for comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography retention time locked dual detection.
abstract: In this paper, a novel, and easy to perform, retention time locking procedure for locking primary and secondary retention times of detector signals in comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GCxGC) dual-detection is proposed and its advantages are demonstrated and discussed. The dual detection retention time locking procedure is a 2-step process for a GCxGC system in which the effluent of the primary column is split, by using a pressure regulated splitter, towards the GCxGC modulator using two identical secondary GC columns of which one is installed in the main GC oven and the other is installed in a secondary GC oven. The first step of the locking procedure is to minimize the secondary retention time difference between both detectors of a compound, which has a retention factor (k) close to 0. This is done by stepwise altering the effective secondary column length, simply by sliding the secondary column, which is installed in the main oven, forwards or backwards through the modulator. The second step is to minimize the secondary retention time difference of a compound which has a significant retention in both dimensions. This is done by stepwise altering the secondary oven temperature rate. This locking procedure was successfully demonstrated for the analysis of a diesel sample by GCxGC coupled to a time of flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) and a nitrogen chemiluminescence detector (NCD) and by GCxGC coupled to a TOFMS and a flame ionization detector (FID). For all compounds the average absolute secondary retention time differences between the NCD or the FID and the TOFMS detectors were 0.03, and 0.07s, respectively, which are significantly less than the average peak widths at half heights, which was 0.2s.
authors.affiliation: DSM Resolve, P.O. Box 18, 6160 MD Geleen, The Netherlands; Analytical Chemistry and Forensic Analyses Group, Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: john.mommers@dsm.com.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mommers
authors.affiliation: DSM Resolve, P.O. Box 18, 6160 MD Geleen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ritzen
authors.affiliation: Givaudan SA, Chemin de la Parfumerie 5, 1214 Vernier, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dutriez
authors.affiliation: Analytical Chemistry and Forensic Analyses Group, Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sjoerd
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: van der Wal
mesh_terms: D002849:Chromatography, Gas / Q000379:methods*; D005410:Flame Ionization; D013058:Mass Spectrometry; D011312:Pressure; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography; Dual-detection; Retention time locking