posted on 2012-08-07, 00:00authored byPaul McA. Harvey, Robert A. Shellie
A rapid approach for comprehensive two-dimensional gas
chromatographic data analysis is introduced, providing important environmental
metrics including total petroleum hydrocarbon concentration as well
as chemical-class distribution. The approach, comprising transformation
of exported data files to two-dimensional retention time arrays, blank
subtraction, alignment and projection onto new axes, subdivision of
the aligned two-dimensional data matrix, and compilation of summary
data is able to be performed without user intervention. The approach
satisfies critical goals of rapid batch analysis with repeatability
and traceability. Application to assessment of petroleum hydrocarbon
contaminated soil samples from Macquarie Island, a remote Southern
Ocean island, is shown to illustrate the utility of this new data
analysis strategy.