Biochemical Techniques and Instrumentation

2.6.2. Principle

The organic compounds are made volatile by derivatization prior to their separation in gas chromatography. Very small amounts of derivatized liquid compound mixture, injected into GC, gets volatilized in the hot injection chamber. The inert carrier gas used as a mobile phase carries the volatized compound mixture through a heated column. The column contains a high boiling liquid stationary phase adsorbed onto the surface of an inert solid material. The compounds that flow through the column get separated based on their differences in their partitioning behavior between mobile gas phase and stationary phase in the column. The separated compounds then pass through a detector that detects the individual compounds and sends an electronic message to the recorder. The recorder responds to the message and prints the chromatogram.