Abstract. A possible way to reduce the size and complexity of
common gas chromatography (GC) systems is the economization of the column
temperature regulation system. To this end, a temperature compensation
method was developed and validated on a benchtop GC-PDD (pulsed discharge
detector) with ethene. An in-house-developed algorithm correlates the
retention index of a test gas to the retention index of a previously
selected reference gas. To investigate further methods of cost reduction,
commercial gas sensors were tested as cheap, sensitive, and versatile
detectors. Therefore, CO2 was chosen as a naturally occurring reference gas, while ethene was chosen as a maturity marker for climacteric fruits and
hence as a test gas. A demonstrator, consisting of a simple
syringe injection system, a PLOT (porous layer open tubular) column boxed in
a polystyrene-foam housing, a commercial MOS (metal-oxide semiconductor)
sensor for the test gas, and a CO2-specific IR (infrared) sensor, was
used to set up a simple GC system and to apply this method on
test measurements. Sorption parameters for ethene and CO2 were
determined via a van 't Hoff plot, where the entropy S was −11.982 J mol−1 K−1 ΔSEthene0 and 1.351 J mol−1 K−1 ΔSCarbondioxide0, and the enthalpy H was −20.622 kJ mol−1 ΔHEthene0 and −14.792 kJ mol−1 ΔHCarbondioxide0, respectively. Ethene (100 ppm) measurements
revealed a system-specific correction term of 0.652 min. Further
measurements of ethene and interfering gases revealed a mean retention time
for ethene of 3.093 min; the mean predicted retention time is 3.099 min. The
demonstrator was able to identify the test gas, ethene, as a function of
the reference gas, CO2, in a first approach, without a column heating
system and in a gas mixture by applying a temperature compensation algorithm
and a system-specific holdup time correction term.