Compositional studies of high-temperature coal tar by GC/FTIR analysis of light oil fractions

Summary A method for determination of the composition of the light oil fractions in high-temperature coal tar by means of distillation, followed by gas chromatography on a crosslinked fused-silica, capillary column coated with optimum amount of stationary phase and identification by capillary gas chromatography/Fourier transform infrared spectrometry combined with GC retention indices (GC/FTIR-RI) is described. This method was effectively used to identify complex mixture such as coal tar without any standard samples, especially, adapted for isomeric compounds. More than 60 and 50 compounds were also separated and identified respectively in light oil fractions. This shows the capability of the capillary GC/FTIR combined with GC retention indices to identify isomers not accomplished by GC/MS.