Gas Chromatography: Qualitative Applications

Qualitative Applications

Gas chromatography also can be used for qualitative purposes. When using an FT–IR or a mass spectrometer as the detector, the available spectral information often can be used to identify individual solutes.

With conventional nonspectroscopic detectors, other methods must be used to identify the solutes. One approach is to spike the sample by adding an aliquot of a suspected analyte and looking for an increase in peak height. Retention times also can be compared with values measured for standards, provided that the operating conditions are identical. Because of the difficulty of exactly matching such condi- tions, tables of retention times are of limited utility.

Kovat’s retention index provides one solution to the matching of retention times. Under isothermal conditions, the adjusted retention times of normal alkanes increase logarithmically. Kovat defined the retention index, I, for a normal alkane as 100 times the number of carbon atoms; thus, the retention index is 400 for butane and 500 for pentane. To determine the retention index for another compound, its adjusted retention time is measured relative to that for the normal alkanes eluting just before and after. For example, a compound eluting between butane and pen- tane has a retention index between 400 and 500. The exact value for the com- pound’s retention index, I_cpd, is given as

where x is the normal alkane eluting before the compound, and x + 1 is the normal alkane eluting just after the compound.