Awaken to Healing Fragrance by Elizabeth Anne Jones

Author:Elizabeth Anne Jones [Jones, Elizabeth Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58394-409-7
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2011-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

GC-MS: What’s in a Name?

The perfect marriage of two instruments is a gas chromatograph and a mass spectrometer. Almost everything you can think of that was chemically discovered or produced was done so with the help of gas chromatography (GC) and mass spectroscopy (MS). The GC-MS is ideally suited for the analysis of essential oils, which are made up of a class of chemicals called volatile organics. GC-MS can identify and quantitate in a three-dimensional way that leaves little doubt as to the identification and quantization of all the chemical constituents of essential oils. Essential oils must be analyzed to understand the proper use, to identify the chemotypes, to check for adulterants and solvents, and to determine the quality of the oil and its origin. Of all the available methods of analysis, the gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer gives the most illuminating, complete, and undisputed look into the chemistry of essential oils.

The data output and interpretive nature of this instrument draws from three dimensions in its analysis output: two quantitative (the X and Y of retention time and peak area) and one qualitative (Z, the mass spectra, which has a wealth of information stored in each millisecond slice of the chromatogram). This information may be searched, calculated, analyzed, compared, and discovered by a powerful computer system operated and directed by the truth-hungry scientist. This is the most powerful and versatile instrument for chemical research and, in this case, for the scientific discovery of essential oils that is accurate and reproducible from lab to lab. GC-MS analysis combined with in vitro and clinical studies is pushing the frontier of the discovery and use of essential oils.

The basic principal of the GC-MS is that the gas chromatograph separates the chemical constituents of the essential oil and the mass spectrometer ionizes each chemical, which produces a molecular “fingerprint.” This fingerprint is then identified by the computer software. The process is accomplished by injecting a very small amount of essential oil into the GC’S “column,” a quartz tube at least twenty-five meters in length and only about 0.25 millimeters in diameter. Globally, this equipment is made using only the metric system as its standard. The sample is forced through the column by helium pressure as the column is gradually heated within the gas chromatograph. This separates and sorts the various chemicals of an oil, depending on each oil’s boiling point, molecular weight, structure, and polarity, and then resolves them in the form of “peaks” that are proportional to the percentage of each constituent.

These separated molecules then flow into the mass spectrometer where they are ionized under a high vacuum and become fragmented. The fragmented molecules are electronically filtered and patterns are detected by the data system that become the fingerprint of that chemical. A vast computer library searches to identify the molecular fingerprint.

Essential oil purity and quality is vital to essential oil therapy and should be the cornerstone of using essential oils in a therapeutic setting. GC-MS analysis of essential oils, if done properly, can reveal

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