On the use of ionic liquid capillary columns for analysis of aromatic hydrocarbons in low-boiling petrochemical products by one-dimensional and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography

• The use of ionic liquid capillary columns, SLB-IL100 and SLB-IL111 for GC × GC.
• GC × GC analysis by simultaneous monitoring of 2D effluent by FID and qMSD.
• GC-FID, GC-qMSD, GC × GC-FID and GC × GC-qMSD analysis of BTEX.

One-dimensional and comprehensive two-dimensional flow modulated gas chromatography with simultaneous flame ionization and mass spectrometric detection were applied for the identification and quantification of benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylenes (BTEX) as well as of all C9–C11 aromatic hydrocarbons in the low-boiling petroleum products gasoline, reformate and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) samples. GC × GC experiments were performed on two reversed phase polarity column sets namely SLB-IL100 (25 m × 250 μm i.d. × 0.2 μm df) + HP-5MS (5 m × 250 μm i.d. × 0.25 μm df) and SLB-IL111 (30 m × 250 μm i.d. × 0.2 μm df) + HP-5MS (5 m × 250 μm i.d. × 0.25 μm df). The one-dimensional GC experiments were carried out on the same ionic liquid columns. The most powerful method is GC × GC on the SLB-111 + HP-5MS column combination. Quantitative analysis of individual aromatic hydrocarbons (C6–C11) present in gasoline, reformate and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) samples was performed by GC × GC-FID using the internal normalization method. Mass spectra obtained by GC × GC-qMSD were used for identification of the aromatic hydrocarbons in these samples.