Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with atomic emission detection and correlation with mass spectrometric detection: principles and application in petrochemical analysis.

Comprehensive gas chromatography (GC x GC) has been combined with atomic emission detection (AED) to enable element-selective detection. Under optimised experimental conditions, the requirement of minimum five data points across a peak can be obtained even for analytes eluting early from the second-dimension column. Simple manipulation of the results allows the combined presentation of up to four sets of elemental data in one two-dimensional plot. GC x GC with AED and mass spectrometric (MS) detection in petrochemical analysis for fingerprinting as well as the identification of N- and S-containing unknowns is presented as an application.