Evaluating Carbon-Centric GC Detectors for VOC Analysis

On Wednesday, January 17, Francois Huby of The Dow Chemical Company will present a talk titled “Comparative Evaluation of ‘Carbon Centric’ Gas Chromatography Detectors for Volatile Organic Compounds Analysis.” The presentation is scheduled to take place at 10:55 a.m. in Room 372 D.

According to Huby, volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis currently is performed using gas chromatography (GC), and the most common detection methods are flame Ionization detection (FID) and mass spectrometry (MS). Both detection methods require calibration using analytical standard solutions at known concentrations of each detected compound. For complex samples, the preparation of standard solutions, calibration of the chromatographic system, and analysis of the chromatographic data can be time consuming and costly. Carbon-centric detectors directly measure the mass of carbon corresponding to each chromatographic peak. Knowledge of the eluted compounds’ chemical nature, possibly obtained by using a spectroscopic detector, enables a direct unbiased estimation of the mass of the compounds eluted from the column. In addition to delivering accurate VOC levels, such detectors also simplify both the calibration of the system and the data reduction step of the analysis. In this presentation, Huby will compare several carbon-centric detectors in terms of performance, ease of use, and cost.