The development of gas chromatography

Abstract

The development of the two major gas chromatographic techniques — based on adsorption and partition — from their beginning is summarized. In gas adsorption chromatography, the work of the pioneers is placed in the context as a precursor to the development of real gas chromatography. After the invention of gas-liquid partition chromatography, the technique underwent very rapid growth, reaching maturity within a few years. Subsequent developments in the theory, detectors and columns made it possible for the technique to reach its present advanced stage. The development of two special gas chromatographic techniques —process control and analysis, and preparative gas chromatography— is summarized separately. incorporate these new microprocessors and, within a few years, completely new instrumentation can be expected. These new instruments will be radically different in many respects: they will “think”, always adjust to the optimum conditions and the operator will have only a start button to push. A further significant development can be expected in data evaluation, a field deliberately omitted from this discussion. As the moment, we already have a number of automated data systems from minicomputers through the dedicated small computers to the large computer systems. The newest developments in electronics will result in increased performance (speed, memory, storage capacity) permitting even the small data systems to do more while in the case of the medium or large systems we shall be able to combine various instruments, compare their results with a data bank, and identify the unknowns based on the combined data and the stored information. The work of Jellum and his group at the University of Oslo in detecting metabolic disorders with the help of complex gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer-computer systems 210 already shows the potentialities of this approach. At the 1957 Lansing Symposium, A. J. P. Martin spoke about the “Past, Present and Future of Gas Chromatography” 211. He finished his address with the following prediction: “If we tie the gas chromatograph to other pieces of laboratory equipment, we have the possibility of almost the automatic chemist. We can separate a substance on the gas chromatograph, we can take every column which is reasonable in turn, and substances as they run from the column can go directly to various instruments such as nuclear magnetic resonance, ultraviolet visible, infrared sepectroscopy, and we can have a mass spectrograph working as well. Here you have the uniting instrument of the gas chromatograph in the center with its slaves clustered around. The calculating machine in the background will have the records of all previous substances separated … and it will come out with a sheet typed at the end with the name of the compound and the weight per cent in the mixture. We may even get it to the stage where it will work out the structure too.” Could it be that Dr. Martin was also correct in this prediction?