1987 Volume 36 Issue 2 Pages 118-120
As chlorinated hydrocarbons are said to be converted to more stable compounds by combustion, chloroform was injected into a gas chromatograph equipped with a flame ionization detector (FID) to examine the products. The exaust gas from the FID was sampled by a florisil column and the acetone eluate was analyzed by GC with an electron capture detector or a mass spectrometer when factors such as sample size, flow rate of air and hydrogen supplied to the detector were varied. Injection of 2 microliters of chloroform into a FID through a packed column resulted in formation of hexachlorobenzene together with hexachloroethane, hexachlorobutadiene, pentachlorobenzene and octachloronaphthalene. Formation of hexachlorobenzene was suppressed by making the sample size smaller, in creasing the flow rate of hydrogen or decreasing the flow rate of air in the detector.
