GC/MS Purchase Q's

[SelfAnalytical]

Hi All

I thought I would throw this question out there to gather a few opinions on the matter.

If you were to buy a GC with single quad, what would you regard as essential elements/specs that should be included. This would be for an environmental lab analysing PAH's, PCB's, and pesticides.

Also, my experience with ion-traps for quantitation of similar analytes as above in dirty matrices such as fruit and vegetable extracts has been very dissapointing. My conclusion was that ion-traps just weren't suitable for routine quantitation of residues in such matrices in that repeatibility was nowhere acceptable. Bear in mind that I was restricted to full scan. any comments?

[CE Instruments]

If you look at the major players in the quads market then I would suggest that the most important differences are not in the quads themselves. If buying myself I would get a couple of samples run to check performance but ease of use of software would be no 1 priority followed by service and support where you are. You do not say how long ago you tried Ion traps, they have got better at quantitation I would send them the samples too fora current evaluation of performance.

[Rick]

Hi!
Sorry for my english, i'm french canadian.
In our laboratory, I analyse pesticide in fruits and vegetables (multiresidues methods...280 pesticides in two injection) in SIM mode with Agilent 6890/5973.
I'm very satisfy with it, good stability, great sensitivity and reproductibility.

[james little]

If interested in doing chemical ionization, would check to make sure the instrument performs well.

Some of the instruments have trouble running pure ammonia due to seats in inlet system. We had to bypass on ours

see CI manifold section at http://users.chartertn.net/slittle/

also some instruments perform poorly in general in CI mode.

If you do CI routinely, essential to have instrument which allows change of EI to CI without venting instrument.