Chromatography Forum

Dear Sirs,
following our problem:
we bought an Agilen LC Ion Trap 6300 for PFOA and PFOS determination.
our contact in agilent suggested this equipment assuring that ion trap is able to reach quantification levels of ppb.

now we are quite unsatisfied because the equipment is not able to give us reproducible results under 5 ppb.

we guess that the problem is that the ion trap is not the correct detector for our apllication, but agilent keeps telling us that we are not able to use correctly the ion trap, and that's the reason why we are facing this problem.

lot of persons tell me that in general ion trap is mainly for qualitative analysis...now i agree with this opinion...also because to get a final result you have to use 4 different programs: one to create an LC method, one for a ION trap method, one to check the datafile, and one for quantification!!!!

which are your experiences?
do you think that we can reach our levels updating something or is it better trying to change the ion trap with a QQQ?or change supplier?

thank you in advance for your replies!

Elisabetta

QqQ (MRM)

In my experience, the best way to choose an instrument is to test it with my samples.
In our lab we've always had only QqQ for quantitative analysis.
Two years ago we're on the way to buy another instrument for quantitation and metabolite detection and a producer suggested us a Q-ToF.
We tested it and despite the nice resolution (good tool for metabolism) it had a very poor sensitivity.
On the other side an ion-trap even with a worst resolution than the ToF resulted in a very high sensitivity and linearity.
In conclusion we renounced to the ToF for a nice ion trap.

ctc040909, I could suggest you to ask to the Agilent specialist to show you how to solve your problem.