SummaryThe present paper describes an automated system for preparative gas chromatography with glass capillary columns, controlled by a microprocessor. The effluent from the capillary column is divided by a pneumatically controlled splitter and any desired split ratio between traps and detector can be obtained. Moreover, a second pneumatic control allows instantaneous change-over to a different split ratio, thus minimizing loss of material during collection.The effluent containing the compounds of interest is passed through a multiple manifold and collected in coiled glass capillary traps. To ensure maximum trapping efficiency even for very small amounts of material, the inner walls of the capillary traps are wetted with a suitable solvent, which gives a quantitative recovery of micro-and nanogram amounts of material.After repetitive sampling, sufficient amounts of material can be obtained for NMR spectroscopy and possibilities exist to enrich tracecomponentswith theaidof adoublecolumnsystem. Two examples of such applications are given, employing mixtures of both synthetic and natural origin.