Development of two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) coupled with Orbitrap-technology-based mass spectrometry: Interest in the identification of biofuel composition.

Nguyen Viet Hung, Chetna Mohabeer, Marie Vaccaro, Stéphane Marcotte, Valérie Agasse-Peulon, Lokmane Abdelouahed, Bechara Taouk, Pascal Cardinael

Journal of mass spectrometry : JMS 2020 Mar

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Comprehensive gas chromatography (GC) has emerged in recent years as the technique of choice for the analysis of volatile and semivolatile compounds in complex matrices. Coupling it with high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) makes a powerful tool for identification and quantification of organic compounds. The results obtained in this study showed a significant improvement by using GC×GC-EI-MS in comparison with GC-EI-MS; the separation of chromatogram peaks was highly improved, which facilitated detection and identification. However, the limitation of Orbitrap mass analyzer compared with time-of-flight analyzer is the data acquisition rate; the frequency average was about 25 Hz at a mass resolving power of 15.000, which is barely sufficient for the proper reconstruction of the narrowest chromatographic peaks. On the other hand, the different spectra obtained in this study showed an average mass accuracy of about 1 ppm. Within this average mass accuracy, some reasonable elemental compositions can be proposed and combined with characteristic fragment ions, and the molecules can be identified with precision. At a mass resolving power of 7.500, the scan rate reaches 43 Hz and the GC×GC-MS peaks can be represented by more than 10 data points, which should be sufficient for quantification. The GC×GC-MS was also applied to analyze a cellulose bio-oil sample. Following this, a highly resolved chromatogram was obtained, allowing EI mass spectra containing molecular and fragment ions of many distinct molecules present in the sample to be identified. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Citation

Nguyen Viet Hung, Chetna Mohabeer, Marie Vaccaro, Stéphane Marcotte, Valérie Agasse-Peulon, Lokmane Abdelouahed, Bechara Taouk, Pascal Cardinael. Development of two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) coupled with Orbitrap-technology-based mass spectrometry: Interest in the identification of biofuel composition. Journal of mass spectrometry : JMS. 2020 Mar;55(3):e4495