ABSTRACT
Most gas chromatography procedures utilize a liquid stationary phase (GLC), and thus the chromatography “type” is partition chromatography most of the time. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and gas chromatography-infrared spectrometry (GC-IR) are very powerful tools for qualitative analysis in GC because they not only give retention time information, but, due to their inherent speed, they are able to measure and record the mass or IR spectrum of the individual sample components as they elute from the GC column. With GLC, however, the mechanism, while still involving the solubilities of the mixture components in one phase, the liquid stationary phase, also involves the relative vapor pressures of the components, since we must have partitioning between one phase that is a liquid and another phase that is a gas. Most GC work involves the separation of volatile liquid mixtures.
