Interest and applications of multidimensional gas chromatography for trace analysis in the petroleum industry

This paper aims to point out the interest and the advantages of multidimensional gas chromatography (MDGC) for performing trace analysis in complex "organic" mixtures such as hydrocarbon mixtures. petroleum or oil samples, and typical feeds and products from refinery or petrochemical processes. In these cases, the success of trace analysis strongly depends oil the separation step. Multidimensional gas chromatography could therefore provide all enhancement of detection capacity leading to a better identification and quantification of trace components. General notions of organic trace analysis in the field of the petroleum industry are presented as well as the principle of multidimensional gas chromatography and comprehensive gas chromatography (GC x GC). A description of typical instrumentation is given with emphasis oil recent developments and improvements in MDGC. A variety of applications underlines the high interest of these techniques. Examples presented here are the determination of oxygenates in C-4 cuts by MDGC, the quantification of by-products present in trace level effluents obtained in petrochemical process such as the Fischer-Tropsch process and dehydrogenation of normal paraffins studied by comprehensive GC x GC.