Comparison of methods to enhance flame ionization detector (FID) signals in gas chromatography

The performances of some numerical methods to improve the signal to noise ratio are compared and applied to enhance noisy signals obtained in gas chromatography with capillary columns and a flame Ionization detector. Several methods have been considered: cutoffs In the Fourier transform of the recorded signal; real time numerical filtering; theoretical model curve fitting; and the correlation of a chromatogram recorded from a pseudorandomly injected sample with the pseudorandom injection function. Numerical real time filtering is shown to be the most convenient method when the main periodic component of the noise has been determined by Fourier analysis.