GC Troubleshooting—Fronting Peaks

Description

Fronting peaks are a good indicator that you have overloaded your gas chromatography column. We have a few different options to correct the problem. We can put less material on the column, choose a column with a larger ID, choose a column with a thicker film, or choose a stationary phase that is more compatible with our sample. 

Additional Resources

• Guide to GC Column Selection and Optimizing Separations

Restek Recommended Tools & Parts

• GC Columns

Transcript

Hey, folks! Welcome to another Restek Tip. In this video, we're going to talk about fronting peaks, one of the more common problems that we can encounter when doing gas chromatography. Fronting peaks and their distinctive shark fin peak shape really tell us that we have put more material onto the column than it can handle. We can address that in two principal ways. We can make a change to the column, so that it can handle more, or we can put less material onto the column.

Let's walk through each of those. If we want to make a change to the column, so that it can hold more stuff, we can choose a column that has a thicker stationary phase or we can choose a column that has a stationary phase that is more compatible with the material that we're injecting. If we want to put less material onto the column, we can either quite simply inject less, or if we're doing a split injection, we can increase our split ratio, which in turn is resulting in less material being put onto the column.

Those are the two solution paths that we have to solve fronting peaks. Thanks very much for joining us for this Restek Tip.