Recent developments in comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography for the analysis of persistent organic pollutants

The analysis of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is relatively difficult because they are typical complex contaminants and present at trace levels. Many POP congeners cannot be effectively separated and analyzed by conventional one-dimensional gas chromatography (1D GC). Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC × GC) becomes a powerful separation technique for analyzing complex mixtures, with its higher peak capacity, higher resolution and sensitivity compared with 1D GC. This review summarizes the GC×GC applications in the analysis of POPs in the past decade, including the advance of GC×GC in solving the separation problems of some POPs such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, dibenzofurans, toxaphene, chlorinated parrafins, etc. The simultaneous analysis of multi-class organic pollutants and untargeted analysis of organic pollutants using GC×GC is also reviewed. The future trends of GC×GC in this field are also discussed.