GC Analysis of Spearmint Essential Oil on SLB^®-IL59

The volatile fraction of essential oils represents a quite complex matrix, being composed of a large variety of compounds, mainly terpenes, sesquiterpenes, alcohols and other oxygenated compounds, that cannot be all separeted in a single GC analysis. The ionic liquid GC column, SLB^®-IL59 showed a good resolvling power toward all the classes of compounds present in the essential oils. It also provided good peak shape for both terpenes and oxygenated compounds thus proving it is a valuable polar GC column for the analyis of these types of samples. More than 50 compounds have been identified on this column by using mass spectra databases and by co-injection of standards.

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