Mini pretreatment system integrated with micro pre-concentrator and micro GC column

Purpose As the concentration of environmental samples was generally very low and existing analytical instruments had limited sensitivity, developing mini pre-treatment systems for effectively concentrating the components was very important and necessary. The purposed of this paper is to develop mini pretreatment system integrated with micro pre-concentrator and micro GC column. Design/methodology/approach In this work, a mini pre-treatment system integrated with a micro pre-concentrator and a micro gas chromatograph (GC) column was proposed. The micro pre-concentrator filled with single-walled carbon nanotubes as adsorbent materials was able to effectively concentrate the trace environmental sample, which dramatically improved the response of detectors. In addition, instead of conventional columns, micro GC columns were able to effectively separate gas mixtures, which are able to overcome low resolution and poor anti-interference ability of portable instruments. Findings The results demonstrated that the proposed pre-treatment system was able to concentrate the trace sample with a concentration factor of 15 and effectively separate the gas mixtures with a resolution over 1.5. Originality/value A mini pre-treatment system integrated with a micro pre-concentrator and a micro GC column was proposed.