New Purge & Trap for EPA 524.3- Advice on manufacturer?

[ciemnla]

Hello,

My lab runs EPA method 524.3 on drinking water samples. We are looking to buy a new Autosampler and Purge & Trap for our GCMS. We are trying to decide between Teledyne Tekmar (AquaTek autosampler/Lumin P&T) and EST (Centrurion autosampler/Evolution P&T). Both look like very nice systems. Does anyone have experience with either of these? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[Sunny.Singh]

Hello, please contact

sunny.singh@scioninstruments.com

[Mr_Nax]

We own a Teledyne Tekmar in Australia for VOC analysis and it is by far the most reliable autosampler we have; but also the most modern... Our old varian keeps dropping and losing vials and erroring. The sampling mechanism of just raising vials vs. physically carrying and moving them is so so superior. We actually trust this instrument to run overnight (unlike the others....)
Hope I helped

[tkubowicz]

Hello

I used to work with system: Tekmar Atomx/Aquatek linked with Agilent GC and Agilent MSD. I installed it and setup few complex environmental method on it.
It is quite good sampler (Atomx/Aquatek) but because of complex combination you need to have good service provider or have someone in the lab who can do minor repairs and troubleshoot instrument.
But I'd recommend Tekmar samplers, the other one you mentioned is complete unknown

Regards

Tomasz Kubowicz

[James_Ball]

I have used the EST models since about 20 years ago. The newest Centurion/Evolution models work great. They did away with moving the sample vials except for soil analysis, the needle moves to the vial now so no more dropped vials when doing waters. I also have the chilled sample plate and it allows me to load two or three days worth of samples and check standards without losing the analytes that normally break down after several hours on the autosampler at room temperature such as Pentachloroethane and 2,2-Dichloropropane.

Since I have experience working on the instruments I can usually just email them with any problems, and they will send out the part, but they also have great service people. I have never had any major problems, just things we wear out since we run them nonstop every day.