In recent years, comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography, or GCxGC, has become widely implemented in the chemical industry. This is due in part to the fact that GCxGC affords increased peak capacity, improved peak resolution, and up to an order-of-magnitude increase in sensitivity compared to traditional one-dimensional GC. Other highly influential factors include the availability of robust commercial systems with options for flow or cryogenic modulation and the development of enhanced user-friendly instrument control and data processing software packages.
At Dow Chemical, GCxGC is being used to help innovate and develop new chemistries and processes as well as to solve issues in manufacturing. Different comprehensive GCxGC methods are developed that allow for the quantitative speciation of complex mixtures encountered in R&D and operations. Both off-line and fully automated on-line modes (i.e. automated on-line process monitoring) have been successfully developed and implemented. Examples include a quantitative off-line GCxGC method for the analysis of feedstocks for plant optimization, and novel on-line comprehensive GC developments, such as, on-line GCxGC connected to a high throughput parallel reactor system for detailed analysis of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis with real-time reaction monitoring and fast GCxGC for high throughput scouting of catalytic reactions. This presentation will discuss both off-line and on-line GCxGC approaches that are providing a wealth of information to develop and improve processes at Dow.
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