Introduction of water and water-containing solvent mixtures in capillary gas chromatography : I. Failure to produce water-wettable precolumns (retention gaps)

Abstract

The introduction of large volumes of water or water-containing solvent mixtures in capillary gas chromatography ( GC) is of wide interest for the direct analysis of aqueous samples, and also for coupling reversed-phase liquid chromatography to GC. Water is a very difficult solvent for GC owing to its high surface tension (poor wetting properties), the very large volume of vapour produced per unit volume of liquid, the high boiling point and the poor properties concerning solvent effects. This paper deals with failures to transfer aqueous samples by retention gap techniques. Precolumns that could serve as retention gaps were either water-wettable or sufficiently inert for running GC, but never both at the same time.