Petrochemical Fingerprinting

Precise characterisation of petroleum-derived fuels is crucial for quality control, to understand the reactions that take place during refining processes, and also for environmental monitoring. Our ‘Petrochemical fingerprinting’ product package provides outstanding separation of complex mixtures, as well as the flexibility to adapt to different detector configurations.

The challenge

• Samples are highly complex, with thousands of compounds per sample.
  
  
• Automated reporting of sample composition is essential.
   
• The analyte range is broad – trace contaminants, adulterants or additives may also need to be identified.
  
  

Simple, automated peak classification in petrochemical samples – such as the substituted benzothiophenes and naphthalenes highlighted here – is a key advantage of the GCxGC software provided with our ‘Petrochemical fingerprinting’ product package.

The solution

• INSIGHT^® GCxGC flow modulation provides enhanced separation with repeatable results across lengthy clinical trials, even for the most volatile species.
  
  
• BenchTOF2™ mass spectrometers provide the sensitivity, selectivity and spectral quality needed for confident identification of targets and unknowns in a single run, as well as extended dynamic range to quantify high-loaders while maintaining sensitivity for trace-level compounds.
   
• Tandem Ionisation^® for BenchTOF™ simultaneously acquires both ‘soft EI’ and regular 70 eV mass spectra, for additional confidence in identification, in a single streamlined workflow.
   
• ChromSpace^® software provides fully-automated  workflows for unattended operation, with full instrument control and data-mining, while the ChromCompare+™ module uses chemometrics to automate sample classification for quality control, R&D and authenticity studies.
  
  

The benefits

• Adaptability: Flexible configurations allow parallel acquisition by different detection techniques, e.g. mass spectrometry, FID or SCD.
  
  
• Streamlined data-processing: Automated workflows allow fast group-type analysis, using easy-to-learn stencils and simple reporting.
   
• Confidence: Smart software tools, such as the Compound Explorer toolkit, quickly filter complex chromatograms for compounds or classes of interest.
   
• Automated workflows: Reliable detection of trace contaminants, adulterants and additives.

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