Application

In general, substances that vaporize below ca. 300 C (and therefore are stable up to that temperature) can be measured quantitatively. The samples are also required to be salt-free; they should not contain ions. Very minute amounts of a substance can be measured, but it is often required that the sample must be measured in comparison to a sample containing the pure, suspected substance known as a reference standard. Various temperature programs can be used to make the readings more meaningful; for example to differentiate between substances that behave similarly during the GC process. Professionals working with GC analyze the content of a chemical product, for example in assuring the quality of products in the chemical industry; or measuring toxic substances in soil, air or water. GC is very accurate if used properly and can measure picomoles of a substance in a 1 ml liquid sample, or parts-per-billion concentrations in gaseous samples. In practical courses at colleges, students sometimes get acquainted to the GC by studying the contents of Lavender oil or measuring the ethylene that is secreted by Nicotiana benthamiana plants after artificially injuring their leaves. These GC analyses hydrocarbons (C2-C40+). In a typical experiment, a packed column is used to separate the light gases, which are then detected with a TCD. The hydrocarbons are separated using a capillary column and detected with an FID. A complication with light gas analyses that include H2 is that He, which is the most common and most sensitive inert carrier (sensitivity is proportional to molecular mass) has an almost identical thermal conductivity to hydrogen (it is the difference in thermal conductivity between two separate filaments in a Wheatstone Bridge type arrangement that shows when a component has been eluted). For this reason, dual TCD instruments are used with a separate channel for hydrogen that uses nitrogen as a carrier are common. Argon is often used when analysing gas phase chemistry reactions such as F-T synthesis so that a single carrier gas can be used rather than 2 separate ones. The sensitivity is less but this is a tradeoff for simplicity in the gas supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography

Gas chromatography has an entirely different field of applications to that of liquid chromatography. In general, gas chromatography is used for the separation of volatile materials and liquid chromatography for the separation of involatile liquids and solids. There are certain compounds, however, that can be separated with either techniques, and more importantly, many involatile substances such as

amino acids, steroids and high molecular eight fatty acids can be derivatized to form volatile substances that can be separated by GC. The derivatization must be highly reproducible and usually proceed to completion in order to maintain adequate accuracy. The capillary columns in GC can have much higher efficiencies than their LC counterpart and thus GC can more easily handle multicomponent mixtures such as essential oils. On the other hand, only LC can separate the peptides, polypeptides, proteins and other large biopolymers that are important in biotechnology. http://www.chromatography-online.org/Principles/Applications/rs69.html

Gas chromatography has a very wide field of application but its first and main area of use is in the separation and analysis of multi component mixtures such as essential oils, hydrocarbons and solvents. Intrinsically, with the use of the flame ionization detector and the electron capture detector (which have very high sensitivities) gas chromatography can quantitatively determine materials present at very low concentrations. It follows, that the second most important application area is in pollution studies, forensic work and general trace analysis.
Gasoline

Gasoline is a multicomponent mixture containing a large number of hydrocarbons, many of which have very similar molecular weights and all are almost exclusively dispersive in interactive character. The structure of many of the hydrocarbons are also very similar and there are many isomers present. As a consequence, due to their interactive similarity the separation factors between individual components is very small. It follows that columns of very high efficiency will be mandatory to achieve an effective separation. It is clear that open tubular columns are ideal for this type of separation problem. In fact, it would be impossible to separate the components of gasoline efficiently with a packed column, even one that is 50 ft long, and even if the inherent long analysis times could be tolerated. In addition this type of separation demands the maximum number of theoretical plates and therefore not only must open tubes be used but tubes of relatively small diameter to produce the maximum number of theoretical plates. In fact, several hundred thousand theoretical plates will be necessary and so the column must also be very long. As has already been discussed, it is necessary to use small radius open tubular columns with a split injection system. Furthermore, as a result of the wide range of

molecular weight of the components present, gasoline has a relatively wide boiling range and so will require a temperature program that will heat the column to 200 C or more. A thermally stable stationary phase must be employed. The individual gasoline components are present over a wide concentration range and thus, for accurate quantitative results, the linear dynamic range of the detector must also be large. These latter demands mandate that the detector must be the FID. http://www.chromatography-online.org/GC/Applications/rs63.html

Applications

Gas chromatography is a physical separation method in where volatile mixtures are separated. It can be used in many different fields such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and even environmental toxins. Since the samples have to be volatile, human breathe, blood, saliva and other secretions containing large amounts of organic volatiles can be easily analyzed using GC. Knowing the amount of which compound is in a given sample gives a huge advantage in studying the effects of human health and of the environment as well. Air samples can be analyzed using GC. Most of the time, air quality control units use GC coupled with FID in order to determine the components of a given air sample. Although other detectors are useful as well, FID is the most appropriate because of its sensitivity and resolution and also because it can detect very small molecules as well. GC/MS is also another useful method which can determine the components of a given mixture using the retention times and the abundance of the samples. This method be applied to many pharmaceutical applications such as identifying the amount of chemicals in drugs. Moreover, cosmetic manufacturers also use this method to effectively measure how much of each chemical is used for their products.
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Analytical_Chemistry/Instrumental_Analysis/Gas_Chromatography