antique equipment - HELP nonsuppressed ion chromatography

[kerrieb]

Hi

I'm just working part mine doing some basic quality assurance while the kids are little. Nice boss but old old equipment.

I have an waters 510 pump, waters 481 UV detector and alltech 320 UV detector using manual injection. Using a shimatzu CR6A chromatopac integrated plotter.

I am having trouble with the integrated plotter when using it for non suppressed ion chromatrography. Because the peaks are broad (method not chromatographic problem) the plotter does a poor job of calculating the peak area. It is fine with UV detection and the narrower peaks.

Is there any Cheap way to hook up these detectors to a PC and use some shareware to analyse the data. As long as I can get the correct peak areas out I'd be happy even if I have to manually pick them myself.

Thanks

Kerrie

[jimmyv]

When using an integrator and peaks are broad you have to set pw ( peak width) to a value that is higher depending on how broad is the width at 1/2 the height. I have a Agilent 3395B integrator and it gives you a selection of values for pw and threshold so that a peak can be detected. I have not used a Shimadzu.

If a peak is to broad, can you used a smaller sample loop like 10 micoliter?
What are you separating with non suppressed ion chromatography?

Jimmy

[kerrieb]

I've managed to get it to detect the peaks I'm just not sure that it is picking them correctly, ie the start and finish at the correct spot. I'm trying to run glyphosate. but i'm about to pull my hair out. I just can't get consistant reproducible results. I'd much rather be doing the method development on LC-MS that I used to do than this.

As well as not being entirely sure about the integration, I am also battling with drifting baselines (I think this is probably temperature related) I'm in Australia its summer and my AC isn't that good.

If anyone can tell me how to get consistant results with ion chromatography particulary for glyphosate I'd be really grateful.

Regards

Kerrie