A SET OF ELECTRONIC SHEETS FOR THE IDENTIFICATION AND QUANTIFICATION OF CONSTITUENTS OF ESSENTIAL OILS

The identification of essential oils constituents has been made easier and faster by the use of automatic software search engines that compare the experimental mass spectra and calculate the retention indices with those in commercial databases. However, these search engines and databases are very expensive. Electronic sheets have been assembled in a set of linked sheets, so that after some data is inserted, linear retention indices, relative response factors, normalization, area correction and absolute quantitation are calculated automatically. The set has been applied to the analysis of essential oils and volatiles in laboratory routine and substantial reduction in time-consuming and error-prone repetitive work were observed. One specific example for the analysis of an essential oil is provided. The designed electronic sheets can be a costless alternative to commercial software for data handling and identification.