The Importance Of Measuring Total Organic Carbon

Organic carbon compounds vary greatly. In fact, one of the first lessons in most introductory Organic Chemistry courses explains that the number of possible carbon compounds is virtually infinite due to carbon’s ability to form long, chain-like molecules. While chromatographic methods like gas chromatography (GC) or high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are able to make quantitative determinations for specific compounds, the user must first know which specific compounds to look for.