ABSTRACT
The debate on what constitutes multidimensional chromatography has been going on in the chromatographic community for quite some time without arriving at a general concensus. Technical sessions on multidimensional gas chromatography are routinely included at major meetings such as the Symposia on Advances in Capillary Chromatography, the Pittsburgh Conference and the Eastern Analytical Symposium. Two-dimensional gas chromatography, in its simplest version, can be carried out in the off-line mode. Cold traps are used in gas chromatography for condensation of solvent vapors from the carrier gas. To function effectively in two-dimensional chromatography, traps must quantitatively retain solutes and also allow rapid reinjection of the trapped components. The most suitable and widely used ancillary devices in gas chromatography are infrared spectrometers and mass spectrometers, although other instruments are occasionally used as well. Environmental analysts often use liquid-solid chromatography as a cleanup step to remove major interferences before gas chromatographic analysis.
