TY - JOUR A1 - Groschke, Matthias A1 - Becker, Roland T1 - Comparison of carrier gases for the separation and quantification of mineral oil hydrocarbon (MOH) fractions using online coupled high performance liquid chromatography-gas chromatography-flame ionisation detection JF - Journal of chromatography A N2 - On-line coupled high performance liquid chromatography-gas chromatography-flame ionisation detection (HPLC-GC-FID) was used to compare the effect of hydrogen, helium and nitrogen as carrier gases on the chromatographic characteristics for the quantification of mineral oil hydrocarbon (MOH) traces in food related matrices. After optimisation of chromatographic parameters nitrogen carrier gas exhibited characteristics equivalent to hydrogen and helium regarding requirements set by current guidelines and standardisation such as linear range, quantification limit and carry over. Though nitrogen expectedly led to greater peak widths, all required separations of standard compounds were sufficient and humps of saturated mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOSH) and aromatic mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOAH) were appropriate to enable quantitation similar to situations where hydrogen or helium had been used. Slightly increased peak widths of individual hump components did not affect shapes and widths of the MOSH and MOAH humps were not significantly affected by the use of nitrogen as carrier gas. Notably, nitrogen carrier gas led to less solvent peak tailing and smaller baseline offset. Overall, nitrogen may be regarded as viable alternative to hydrogen or helium and may even extend the range of quantifiable compounds to highly volatile hydrocarbon eluting directly after the solvent peak. KW - Mineral oil hydrocarobons KW - Food KW - Liquid chromatography KW - Gas chromatography KW - MOSH/MOAH PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-601450 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chroma.2024.464946 SN - 0021-9673 VL - 1726 SP - 1 EP - 7 PB - Elsevier CY - New York, NY AN - OPUS4-60145 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -