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A New Pulsed Flow Modulation GC × GC–MS with Cold EI System and Its Application for Jet Fuel Analysis

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Abstract

We designed and operated a new system of pulsed flow modulation (PFM) two dimensional comprehensive gas chromatography (GC × GC) mass spectrometry (MS). This system is based on the combination of PFM–GC × GC with a quadrupole mass spectrometer of GC–MS via a supersonic molecular beams interface and its fly-through Cold EI ion source and applied this system for the analysis of JP8 jet fuel. PFM is a simple GC × GC modulator that does not consume cryogenic gases while providing tunable second GC × GC column injection time for enabling the use of quadrupole based mass spectrometry regardless its limited scanning speed. We analyzed JP8 jet fuel with our new PFM–GC × GC–MS with Cold EI system and found that as the second dimension GC elution time is increased the observed molecular ion mass is reduced. This unique observation that helped in improved sample compounds identification under co-elution conditions was enabled via having abundant molecular ions in Cold EI for all the fuel compounds. We named this type of analysis as PFM–GC × GC × MS. We found and discuss in this paper that PFM–GC × GC–MS with Cold EI combines improved separation of GC × GC with Cold EI benefits of tailing-free ultra-fast ion source response time and enhanced molecular ions and mass spectral isomer and isotope information for the provision of increased sample identification information.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Grants numbers 393/11 and 356/15). This research was also supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Israel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry, Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Uri Keshet, Alexander B. Fialkov, Tal Alon & Aviv Amirav

Authors
  1. Uri Keshet
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  2. Alexander B. Fialkov
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  3. Tal Alon
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  4. Aviv Amirav
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Correspondence to Aviv Amirav.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Published in the topical collection 2015 International Symposium on GPC/SEC and Related Techniques with guest editor André M. Striegel.

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Keshet, U., Fialkov, A.B., Alon, T. et al. A New Pulsed Flow Modulation GC × GC–MS with Cold EI System and Its Application for Jet Fuel Analysis. Chromatographia 79, 741–754 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10337-016-3087-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10337-016-3087-z

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