Volatile organic compounds and odorants analysis in industrial gas chromatography

Highly volatile organic compounds and odorants are viewed as critical analysis in multiple industrial segments including taste and odours, food packaging, and environmental applications. In this chapter, several analytical strategies are described to maximize the separation power of a given chromatographic system. One technique involves the implementation of cryogenic chromatography by either trapping the analytes with a cryogenic trap or by in-oven cryogenic oven trapping with a low phase ratio column. Another technique, with a high degree of simplicity and minimal hardware requirement involves the use of adsorption chromatography with a selective and highly retentive adsorbent employed in a porous layer open tubular column form factor. Yet another highly effective strategy involves the incorporation of hyphenated techniques such as multidimensional gas chromatography for targeted compound analysis, and the employment of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with various modulation devices for a complete sample characterization. The use of advanced mass spectrometric techniques to enhance separation and detection such as ion mobility spectrometry, selected-ion flow-tube mass spectrometry, time-of-flight, and quadrupole time-of-flight are not discussed here. Despite they are highly powerful hyphenated techniques, these instruments are not widely employed in manufacturing laboratories.