I would like to know if anyone has tried, or has any experience, in analyzing liquid paraffin with GC/MS and recording retention times. As hypothesized, this alkane mixture could maybe serve as a cheaper alternative to saturated alkane mixtures for determining RI and performing qualitative determinations with the help of mass spectra libraries.
It seems an odd question: paraffin oil is high boiling (one commercial, example is Aldrich 18512, bp 260-450 °C) and viscous. How do you think to inject such a mixture in a GC-MS hoping it volatilizes to pass through the column?
The other problem with paraffin oil could be it's purity. For determining RI you need a standard of known composition and without impurities of any kind. It may not be so easy to find paraffin oil which fulfills these requirements, and it could turn out to be nearly as expensive as an alkane mixture.
Yes you can, but not in standard test method.
The "big" peaks will be n-alkanes - between them i-alkanes. Check if you get linear dependence between retention time and LRI.
Remember that LRIare used only for linear ramp of temperature.
Regards
GB
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