Development of a combined heart-cut and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography system to extend the carbon range of volatile organic compounds analysis in a single instrument

Dunmore, Rachel, Hopkins, James, Lidster, Richard, Mead, Mohammed Iqbal, Bandy, Brian, Forster, Grant, Oram, David, Sturges, William ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9044-7169, Phang, Siew-Moi, Samah, Azizan Abu and Hamilton, Jacqueline (2016) Development of a combined heart-cut and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography system to extend the carbon range of volatile organic compounds analysis in a single instrument. Separations, 3 (3). ISSN 2297-8739

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Abstract

The majority of atmospheric measurements of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are usually limited to a small range, either in volatility or time resolution. A combined heart-cut gas chromatography (GC) with comprehensive two-dimensional GC (GC×GC) instrument was developed, specifically to increase the number of VOCs analysed using a single instrument. The system uses valve based modulation and was fully automated, making it suitable for use in the field. A laboratory comparison to an existing dual-channel GC (DC-GC) instrument demonstrated that this new GC-GC×GC can accurately measure atmospheric mixing ratios of C5-C13 VOC species with a wide range of functionalities. Approximately hourly field measurements were conducted at a remote marine atmospheric research station in Bachok, Malaysia. This region was shown to be influenced by clean marine air masses, local anthropogenic and biogenic emission sources and aged emissions transported from highly polluted South East Asian regions. A dramatic shift in air mass direction was observed each day associated with the development of a sea breeze, which influenced the diurnal profiles of species measured at the Bachok site. A proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS) was also deployed at Bachok and compared to the new GC-GC×GC instrument. Overall, the GC-GC×GC instrument has been shown to perform well in lab comparisons and during field observations. This represents a good compromise between volatility and high complexity online measurements of VOCs.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: comprehensive two dimensional gas chromatography (gc×gc),volatile organic compounds (vocs),heart-cut,multidimensional gas chromatography,atmospheric analysis,sdg 14 - life below water ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_below_water
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2016 00:20
Last Modified: 24 May 2023 14:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/59996
DOI: 10.3390/separations3030021

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