Similar to the process of distillation, gas-liquid chromatography (typically referred to as gas chromatography, or, more simply, GC) utilises a distillation tower to separate the petroleum. However, compared to distillation's 2 to 300 theoretical plates, gas chromatography includes more than 25,000. This provides a greater degree of separation.
In order to achieve more complete analyses, gas chromatography is used along with mass spectrometry (to make gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, or GCMS), with infrared spectrometry (to make gas chromatography/infrared spectrometry, or GCIR), and with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (to make gas chromatography/isotope ratio mass spectrometry, or GSIRMS).