High-performance liquid chromatography coupled off-line with capillary gas chromatography. Application to the determination of the aromatics content in middle distillates

The off-line coupling of normal-phase HPLC and capillary GC was used to determine the total aromatics content of middle distillates. Samples doped with internal standards were injected into the liquid chromatograph and the two collected fractions, saturates and aromatics, were further analysed by capillary GC. Good repeatability of the analysis was obtained for this determination on both gas oils and kerosenes and there was good agreement with other analytical methods (mass spectrometry and preparative liquid chromatography).