Chromatography Forum

We have runs with samples and standards that have 180 analytes and currently we are individually reviewing each analyte which takes forever. Is it possible to break the chromatogram into segments for example for the run time is 30minutes, break the chromatogram into segments of 5 minutes and review chromatograms within that 5 minute window and then move onto the next segment and review. Is this possible? Also while reviewing have the peak area and concentration available on the same window.

I'm not aware of any "built-in" way to do this. It sounds like you need a custom macro and it will most likely be fairly complex. If your company has some money, Agilent will build custom macros for customers for a fee.

However, I remember a long time ago using MSD Chemstation EnviroQuant mode for PCBs by dual column ECD method. Each Aroclor Std had five peaks it quanted using the "Compound Type" function in the "Edit Compounds" window. We were using the type "L1", "L2" etc for particular groups. This feature requires that each compound be labeled the same name but with a numerical ending as "_1" then "_2" etc. You can then create a compound called TOTAL "compound name" and it will sum the areas of all peaks in the group. I don't remember all the specifics about it or how to set it up (at my last job about 3 years ago) but I do remember you could see all the compounds in the group in the QEdit chromatogram with all five peaks listed and their concentrations in the QEdit results list to the lower right.

As far as I know this feature is only available in MSD Chemstation Rev D.02 and later and it must be installed as EnviroQuant mode. This is easily done after setup by installing a second "offline" instrument as EnviroQuant.

If I remember/find out more info I'll be sure to let you know. Send me an email if you'd like to keep in contact.
ty(dot)lahren(at)gmail(dot)com

This is not a difficult macro, but it cannot be done through the standard interface. You'll have to delve into the macro programming language.

This is not a difficult macro, but it cannot be done through the standard interface. You'll have to delve into the macro programming language.

I suppose "difficult" is a relative term. I would still probably find it difficult as I'm not great with programming macros.

If this is LC-chemstation reviewing in batch-mode, can't you just set up a series of processing methods, each handling a different set of ions, in a different time-range? You can reprocess one batch with as many different methods as you want (provided you never, ever save a batch-file! If you do that, it will always reopen with the method used for processing, and won't offer you the choice of selecting a different method when you open it; but there are tricks to deal with this too).

If you are running GC chemstation, there is a product offered from Agilent called matchcompare. This was once a varian product which was ported over to chemstation. This can be set up to compare chromatographs to a reference standard and allows a report showing you the differences between any two or more chromatographs. It can be customized to look at any of the reported results.