On the use of quadrupole mass spectrometric detection for flow modulated comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography

Flow modulated comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with simultaneous flame ionization detection (FM GC × GC-FID) and quadrupole mass spectrometric detection (FM GC × GC-qMSD) was applied to the analysis of a quantitative reference standard sample covering the C5–C14 hydrocarbon range and a kerosene sample. This study reports the influence of the data acquisition frequency (DAF) of the qMSD on the qualitative and quantitative data. The DAF was varied between 5.27 and 25.45 Hz. In GC × GC-qMSD, the characterization of peaks is getting worse with decreasing qMSD frequencies which deteriorate the quality of the 2D contour plots of the separations. It is, however, demonstrated that the improved characterization of the peaks at high qMSD frequencies is combined with loss in sensitivity and in spectral quality. Dependences of a 2D hydrocarbon peak area (∑Ai of all corresponding 2D peaks) on the DAFs show negative slopes which testify the conclusion that the sensitivity of GC × GC-qMSD determinations decreases with the increase of DAF. Consequently, the limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) increase with the increase of DAF. Moreover, quality criteria on recorded spectral data also indicate that the lower the DAF is, the higher is the spectral quality.