Patent ID: 8592755

Claim:
A method of operating a switching valve of a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) apparatus, comprising the steps of: (1) installing a sample injector; (2) installing a heart-cutting unit downstream of the sample injector; (3) connecting a first capillary column to the heart-cutting unit and a second capillary column to the heart-cutting unit respectively; (4) connecting a switching valve to the heart-cutting unit via a first interconnecting column and connecting the switching valve to the heart-cutting unit via a second capillary column respectively wherein the switching valve includes a plurality of ports; (5) connecting the switching valve to a mass spectrometer (MS) via a second interconnecting column; and (6) either (a) switching at least two of the ports to create a first sample loop for passing compounds from the first capillary column to the MS via the first interconnecting column, the first sample loop, and the second interconnecting column, and (b) switching the remaining ports to create a second sample loop for passing compounds from the second capillary column to the discharge column via the second capillary column and the second sample loop; or (c) switching at least two of the ports to create a third sample loop for passing compounds from the second capillary column to the MS via the third sample loop and the second interconnecting column, and (d) switching the remaining ports to create a fourth sample loop for passing compounds from the first capillary column to a discharge column via the first interconnecting column and the fourth sample loop.