{"id":51581,"date":"2013-08-20T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/uncategorized\/19-what-do-chromatograms-tell-us-first-peaks-elute-with-solvent-peak\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T23:34:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:34:27","slug":"19-what-do-chromatograms-tell-us-first-peaks-elute-with-solvent-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/blogs\/gnbl4558\/19-what-do-chromatograms-tell-us-first-peaks-elute-with-solvent-peak","title":{"rendered":"[19] What do Chromatograms tell us? First Peaks elute with Solvent Peak"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Jaap<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chromatograms are like fingerprints.  If you can \u201cread\u201d chromatograms well, you often can find a plausible cause. In this series, we will show a series of GC-chromatograms that are obtained from users and discuss some potential causes for the phenomena. Then we can move into some solutions for improvement.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A chromatographer having a challenge, shared a chromatogram as shown in fig. 1 .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"chromatogram<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fig.1 Chromatogram showing strong solvent tail. Peaks 1-3 are not separated: Peak 4 elutes on a skimmed base line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sample contained 17 components, but the first 4 components did elute within or on the tail of the solvent, making quantification impossible or inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually when the solvent is tailing, there is an injection challenge or there is dead volume involved.\u00a0 For instance, we discussed dead volume in a previous blog, where column coupling was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are however several other conditions that cause solvent peak tailing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most obvious ones are: \u201ccolumn installed not correctly\u201d and \u201cinjection temperature too low\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other factors could be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n