ABSTRACT
Quantitative analysis in gas chromatography (GC) involves the measurement of either peak heights or peak areas. The flame ionization detector, the most commonly used detector in GC, responds to mass of solute entering it per unit time and thus the peak area is directly related to solute mass. This highly desirable property makes the accuracy of the quantitative analysis relatively indifferent to small changes in flow rate. Peak heights are still frequently employed in quantitative analysis, particularly where a chromatograph is being used that does not include data acquisition and processing equipment. There are two procedures used in GC and LC for quantitative analysis; the first employs a reference standard to which the peak areas or peak heights of the other solutes in the sample are compared; the second is a normalization procedure where the area of any one peak is expressed as a percentage of the total area of all the peaks.
