Gas chromatography (GC) is an analytical technique used to separate the chemical components of a sample mixture and then detect them to determine their presence or absence and/or how much is present.
GC is a widely used technique across most industries: for quality control in the manufacture of many products from cars to chemicals to pharmaceuticals; for research purposes from the analysis of meteorites to natural products; and for safety from environmental to food to forensics. Gas chromatographs are frequently hyphenated to mass spectrometers (GC-MS) to enable the identification of the chemical components.