I have been reviewing our SOP's on GC routine PM and PQ procedures. I was curious what other labs are doing to qualify their instruments after semi-annual or annual PM? Our procedures in the past have been to go over the GC as needed, with thorough cleaning, parts replacement as needed, etc. For the PQ afterwards, I confirm oven temps at 3 temps across a range of 40-250ºC (using a NIST traceable thermocouple of course), confirm split flows, and then run a standard test mixture with a calibration curve to confirm instrument operation, linearity, carryover, noise, etc.

I have spoken with other labs, and many wind up dedicating their GC's to one or two analyses, and don't like the idea of switching over to a different standard test system.

Anyway, I'm trying to strengthen our SOP, and am curious what other labs are doing for their routine GC qualifications?