Chromatography Forum

My laboratory has to purchase a new GC coupled to FID and ECD detectors with headspace sampler. Single column or dual column. The budget is around US$ 81 thousand.

Could anyone suggest which brand and model is best?

Thank you very much.

We bought this summer a shimadzu GC-2010 plus with EFC, ECD+FID detectors, 2 split/splitless injectors and dual column (35% phenyl on ecd for pesticides/pcb and 5% phenyl on fid for epa8015), coupled with an HTA 280HT headspace/liquid/SPME injection (HTA it's an italian company that makes autosamplers).
Everything works fine and as expected, but i am still impressed about the shimadzu's ecd sensitivity, you just need to get in touch with the japanese minded software and you'll be satisfied.

We spent less than half of your budget, perkin elmer and bruker prices were around shimadzu, but bruker one looked a bit old (it's still the last varian gc) and perkin elmer was at the same price but with manual flow control, for EFC we had to spent more. Agilent asked the same price they ask for a GC/MS single quad/iontrap (it was twice the price we spent for GC2010), we found this ridiculous and discarded it for this reason, even though we have agilent's in our lab and we know their quality, but that was way too much for just an ECD/FID.

Good luck getting the best at the best price, maybe try to send them some samples to see which has the best sensitivity.

Thanks a lot for your information.

My lab has an Agilent GC-FID/ECD now and we have methods developed on this platform with accurate and reproducible results. So we know Agilent's performance for my existing methods that do not require very high sensitivity.

How do you compare the performance of the Shimadzu and Agilent analyzers?
If the prices are so enormously different, I should phone up the Shimadzu salesperson to understand further.

Very grateful for your comments.

We've just bought a couple of new Agilent GCs. These days they're made in China and we've had trouble with getting them installed, because of communication problems between UK and China. They're still good bits of kit but Agilent are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with.

Don't worry about the prices you're quoted, theyll discount like nothing on earth if they think you'll actually buy something.

Thanks a lot for your information.

My lab has an Agilent GC-FID/ECD now and we have methods developed on this platform with accurate and reproducible results. So we know Agilent's performance for my existing methods that do not require very high sensitivity.

How do you compare the performance of the Shimadzu and Agilent analyzers?
If the prices are so enormously different, I should phone up the Shimadzu salesperson to understand further.

Very grateful for your comments.

We had to choose an high sensitivity ECD for PCB and halogenated solvents in traces (my lower point of calibration must be 20 ppb of Aroclors) and i compared this application from agilent:
http://www.chem.agilent.com/Library/app ... 6236EN.pdf

with a 20 ppb standard of Aroclor 1221 (is the lower response aroclor) i sent to shimadzu. The peak height of the major peaks for quantitation was impressive (and still is after we bought the gc), Agilent uses single congeners at 10 ppb to demostrate the quality of their detector, i can analyze 20 ppb of Aroclor (with single congener concentration way lower than 10 ppb) without any problem using Aroclor 1221 which has the lower amount of chlorine among all aroclors.

My personal opinion is that Agilent focused on mass spectrometers, this is probably why they have the best on the market at a reasonable price.
But as i already said, they tried to sell me a simple ECD+FID at the same price they would sell a singleq/trap GC/MS, i spent about half to have the same or probably slighty better performance on ECD.

I never really compared agilent's FID vs Shimadzu's FID since i couldn't care less about sensitivity, i only use it for samples with medium to high concentration in solvents. The only thing i can say is that it has a good reproducibility and seems to detect lower amounts than my old Varian 3380 FID (which wasn't bad at all).

Anyway the better thing to do is to compare instrument by sending them your samples, and if the performances are comparable look at the price.

Good luck!

Thanks both for sharing your invaluable experiences.

Edde

I am an application chemist with Teledyne Tekmar. We have an HT3 and a Versa headspace instrument that can attach to any GC or GC/MS manufacturers instrument. We are a worldwide supplier of quality headspace, purge and trap and TOC instrumention. Our website is http://www.teledynetekmar.com/

Thanks

Hi Edde,

I'm the Sales Manager of DANI Instruments - Italy. We are manufatcurer of GC and GC/MS instrumentation and head space sampler too. I could suggest to contact our dealer in US, GMI inc (www.gmi-inc.com)