Chris English | Authors

Small leaks may compromise column lifetime, increase maintenance, cause retention time shifts, and decrease sensitivity at elevated temperatures, but do they matter?

In this instalment of “Practical GC”, air leaks in a gas chromatography (GC) system and their impact on GC stationary phases are examined.

Identifying the source of siloxanes makes troubleshooting that much easier.

Since capacity is the maximum amount of sample on column before peak distortion occurs and is directly proportional to column dimensions, this instalment of “Practical GC” will expand our continuing evaluation to include narrow-bore and microbore columns with 0.25 mm, 0.18 mm, and 0.10 mm column internal diameters.

In the latest instalment of “Practical GC”, Chris English takes an empirical approach and examines concentrations for a wide range of compound polarities on several stationary phases, and determines overload as measured by symmetry.

Ethylene glycol is a particularly difficult compound to analyze because it is not easily extracted from water. Many environmental samples originate from water runoff at airports, where ethylene glycol is used as a de‑icing agent for airplanes during winter months. Hydraulic fracturing is a technique where pressurized fluid and sand or other solids (proppant) are used in gas drilling to allow gas extraction. Glycols are a common ingredient in most hydraulic fracturing fluid and play a key role in preventing emulsifications and stabilizing the solutions. The direct aqueous injection of ethylene glycol is challenging because it can be difficult to attain reproducibility and good peak shape. The large expansion volume of water can cause backflash, carryover can cause inconsistent results, and excess water can extinguish the flame ionization detection (FID) flame. This article describes a robust approach to analyze glycols in aqueous samples, which reduces downtime and maintains sensitivity.