Recent advances in Accelerated Solvent Extraction systems, reduces the time spent on sample preparation prior to GC analysis. The method reported here is applicable to soils with a hydrocarbon content (HC)(>C12) between 25 and 4000 mg/kg and waste with a HC (C10-C40) between 50 and 8000 mg/kg expressed on a dry matter basis. All hydrocarbons with a boiling range of approximately 175 °C to 525 °C, e.g. n-alkanes from C10H22 to C40H82, isoalkanes, cycloalkanes, alkyl benzenes, alkyl naphthalenes, and polycyclic aromatic compounds are determined as total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH).

The Thermo Scientific TRACE GC Ultra is applied for the analysis of fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs). The separation was performed on a Thermo Scientific TRACE TR-FAME GC column, with flame ionisation detection.

The Thermo Scientific TRACE GC Ultra is applied for the comparison of a fused silica and a metal GC column using a standard test mix. The columns compared are the Thermo Scientific TraceGOLD TG-WaxMS and TraceGOLD TG-WaxMT GC columns and full method details are available in the application note PDF.

The Thermo Scientific TRACE GC Ultra is applied for the analysis of residual solvents by USP method 467. The separation was performed on a Thermo Scientific TRACE TR-V1 GC column, with flame ionization detection.

In this work, the performance of a 0.15 mm internal diameter (ID) GC column is compared with that of a 0.25 mm ID GC column. A 50% increase in the speed of analysis for a 14 component fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) reference standard C8–C24 mix is demonstrated using the 0.15 mm GC column. No compromise in the separation capability of the method was observed, and conversion of the conventional method was easily achieved using conventional GC instrumentation.