Chromatography Forum

Please Help!

I want to analyse H2, N2, CO, CO2 with argon as carrier gas (for better H2 sensitivity) on a 6890 GC with TCD. I have a restek Shincarbon ST micropacked column with ID 0.53mm, 2m. I can't find any recommendations for the pressures and flows required when using argon as the carrier gas. Is there any reference for this? I am also unable to find a van deemter plot for this to deduce these values. Does anyone have any experience with this? I would like to know what flow rates and pressures I should operate this at for best separation.

I checked the Restek flow calculator and they don't have a provision for Argon in there.

There was a discussion on this board a while back:

https://www.chromforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=27090

You might read through that and see if something jumps out at you. Someone mentioned that the optimum flow rate for Argon is about 3.85 times less than helium.

Failing the presence of an Argon plot for this test, I'd look for H2, He, N2, Ar plots for other tests and extrapolate, the trends will be similar even if the factors are not.