Integration parameters and their effects on quantitative results with two-step peak summation quantitation in comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography

Quantification of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatographic (GC×GC) data in a commercial software package is examined. ChromaTOF® (Leco Instruments) includes a smoothing step prior to data integration. Improper choice of integration parameters can introduce errors in excess of ±10% and as high as 60% in the total peak area. Herein we demonstrate the critical nature of the smoothing parameters in this software, particularly the expected peak width in the second dimension (2w) which should be verified as part of a QA/QC protocol.