Real-time target selection optimization to enhance alignment of gas chromatograms

An improved method for real-time selection of the target for the alignment of gas chromatographic data is described. Further outlined is a simple method to determine the accuracy of the alignment procedure. The target selection method proposed uses a moving window of aligned chromatograms to generate a target, herein referred to as the window target method (WTM). The WTM was initially tested using a series of 100 simulated chromatograms, and additionally evaluated using a series of 55 diesel fuel gas chromatograms obtained with four fuel samples. The WTM was evaluated via a comparison to a related method (the nearest neighbor method (NNM)). The results using the WTM with simulated chromatograms showed a significant improvement in the correlation coefficient and the accuracy of alignment when compared to the alignments performed using the NNM. A significant improvement in real-time alignment accuracy, as assessed by a correlation coefficient metric, was achieved with the WTM (starting at ∼1.0 and declining to only ∼0.985 for the 100th sample), relative to the NNM (starting at ∼1.0 and declining to ∼0.4 for the 100th sample) for the simulated chromatogram study. The results determined when using the WTM with the diesel fuels also showed an improvement in correlation coefficient and accuracy of the within-class alignments as compared to the results obtained from the NNM. In practice, the WTM could be applied to the real-time analysis of process and feedstock industrial streams to enable real-time decision making from the more precisely aligned chromatographic data.