Patent ID: 8301397

Claim:
A method of determining at least one physical property of a mixture of molecular compounds, comprising: using a two-dimensional chromatography apparatus to determine amounts of compounds present in the mixture; and determining the at least one physical property from the amounts using a previously calibrated relation connecting the at least one physical property to the amounts, and wherein the two-dimensional gas chromatography apparatus includes columns and the method further comprises recording a chromatographic signal comprising chromatographic peaks, generating a two-dimensional chromatogram with each column thereof corresponding to a portion of the chromatographic signal with the chromatographic peaks forming spots on the chromatogram, defining the spots with polygons, adjusting each polygon by identifying portions of the chromatographic signal contained between two intersections of each polygon using columns of the chromatographic peaks present in the portions by displacing the intersections according to the start times, the end times and the chromatographic peak maxima and determining the amount of at least one molecular compound by calculating a surface area of the adjusted polygon.