Real-time controlled multidimensional gas chromatography with electronic pressure control: application to chlorobiphenyl analysis

Multidimensional gas chromatography was applied to the quantitative determination of planar chlorobiphenyls (PCBs) in commercial PCB mixtures. The instrumental setup is based on real-time controlled column switching in which the heartcuts are elucidated through retention indices calculated by linear extrapolation from the retention times of n-alkanes as reference compounds. Electronic pressure control providing pressure programming was used to adjust the pressure at the injector and at the mid-point of the column tandem.