Chromatography Forum

Hello Friends ,

Recently was informed about the NQAD , seemingly impressive (universal ?) detector .Has any one used it ? It is better than ELSD & CAD ......? Can we have some expert ( technical -non commercial )comments on it ? Also chip in with a few pros and cons..
Thanks & Cheers !

It's new enough that there are not many in use (if you get one, you can be the first to report on it! ).

The name leaves me cold -- made up by marketing people and is virtually meaningless ("Nano Quantity Analyte Detector" doesn't provide a whole lot of information!). The original name "Nucleation Condensation Aerosol Detector" is more informative.

The idea is certainly creative: evaporating the solvent and then passing the resulting aerosol through a chamber that lets water vapor recondense on them so that they are bigger and more easily detected. I have no direct idea (othter than vendor's literature) how well it works in practice.

I tried to demo the NQAD but it got pushed out a couple of times. It seems to be similar to the CAD in price and performance. I tried and really liked the CAD but at the end of the day it is only about 5x better sensitivity than a few of the ELSD's out there for more than 2x the cost. I liked both the Grace/Alltech 3500 and the Sedex 75 (now thru Agilent) ELSD's. I did a full comparison using some HILIC assays of glucose. I'll see if I can dig it up.