Applications of Gas chromatography

Gas chromatography is a physical separation method in where volatile mixtures are separated. It can be used in many different fields such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and even environmental toxins. Since the samples have to be volatile, human breathe, blood, saliva and other secretions containing large amounts of organic volatiles can be easily analyzed using GC. Knowing the amount of which compound is in a given sample gives a huge advantage in studying the effects of human health and of the environment as well.

Air samples can be analyzed using GC. Most of the time, air quality control units use GC coupled with FID in order to determine the components of a given air sample. Although other detectors are useful as well, FID is the most appropriate because of its sensitivity and resolution and also because it can detect very small molecules as well.

GC/MS is also another useful method which can determine the components of a given mixture using the retention times and the abundance of the samples. This method be applied to many pharmaceutical applications such as identifying the amount of chemicals in drugs. Moreover, cosmetic manufacturers also use this method to effectively measure how much of each chemical is used for their products.