Rapid sequential separation of essential oil compounds using continuous heart-cut multi-dimensional gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

A method for separation and identification of peaks in essential oil samples based on rapid repetitive heart-cutting using multidimensional gas chromatography (MDGC)–mass spectrometry (MS) coupled with a cryotrapping interface is described. Lavender essential oil is analyzed by employing repetitive heart-cut intervals of 1.00 and 1.50 min, achieved in a parallel MDGC–MS/GC-FID experiment. The number of peaks that were detected in 1D GC operation above a given response threshold more than tripled when MDGC–MS employing the cryotrapping module method was used. In addition, MDGC–MS enabled detection of peaks that were not individually evident in 1D GC–MS, owing to effective deconvolution in time of previously overlapped peaks in 1D GC. Thus separation using the cryomodulation approach, without recourse to using deconvolution software, was possible. Peaks widths decreased by about 5–7-fold with the described method, peak capacity increased from about 9 per min to 60 per min, and greater sensitivity results. Repeatability of retention times for replicate analyses in the multidimensional mode was better than 0.02% RSD. The present study suggests that the described heart-cutting technique using MDGC–MS can be used for general improvement in separation and identification of volatile compounds.