On-line combination of aqueous-sample preparation and capillary gas chromatography

Methods currently in use to combine the preparation of aqueous samples on-line with capillary gas chromatography (GC) comprise heartcut-orientated reversed-phase liquid chromatography-GC and analyte-isolation-orientated analyte extraction-GC. These approaches either use techniques in which water is directly introduced onto the GC column, or an indirect approach in which water is eliminated, i.e., by solid-phase extraction, solid-phase microextraction or liquid-liquid extraction, prior to introduction of the analytes onto the GC column. The latter type of approach is much more successful and user-friendly, and many applications have been reported.