Advice on general purpose narrow bore GC column

[Jasn]

Hi all,

we are about to embark on a quite ambitous project to consolidate and downscale the analysis of different classes of pollutants (PAHs, PCBs, phenols(derivatized), chlorobenzenes, OCP,OPP,brominated flame retardands) on environmental matrices (water, soil and soil improvers).

One of the things we would like to introduce with this project is narrow bore (0.18mm,0.15mm i.d.) GC columns. Our traditional methods all use 30m*0.25mm*0.25um columns and have way too long chromatographic runs. These columns are of the "5%diphenyl/95% dimethyl polysiloxane" type. Right now all the different classes have their own chromatography.

We would like to make 1 master method for the determination of those analytes, using those narrow bore columns (and MS/MS).
the obvious choice of column would be the same phase but shorter (e.g. 20m*0.18mm*0.18um) columns, but for some applications the stationairy phase is not quite selective enough.

Co-elution of triphenylene and chrysene is one of the problems we encounter with these columns as well as partial co-elution of BBF and BKF.
triphenylene is a typical PITA if we run food samples.

Could you guys (and girls) give some suggestions what other types of column might do the trick? I know it is probably impossible to find one column that is faster AND gives a baselineseparation for all isobaric compounds, but there must be something that we can work with.

thanks in advance!

regards,

Jasn

[Peter Apps]

Have you thought about comprehensive GCxGC ? - it is the closest approach to a single system that can separate "everything".

Peter

[Jasn]

Hi Peter,

thanks for the suggestion. I think that would be somewhat overkill for what we are trying to do.
The problem really concerns a few critical separations, mostly PAHs (those i mentioned in my original post).
I just wanted to see if some people have tried similar things and could suggest a type of column.

kind regards,

Jasn