Calibration of new GC

[hcc1229]

Hello,
The fuel lab that I work at has just bought a Perkin Elmer Clarus 580 GC, and we're running it with TotalChrom 6.3.2.0646. For those who have experience with this chromatograph and/or program, how long did it take for you to calibrate it? How many levels do you have and how many runs did it take to get as accurate as you wanted? We will mainly be using it to check the ethanol percentages in fuel samples, so that's the component we're focused on mostly. Any input is greatly appreciated.

[rb6banjo]

Are you developing a method from scratch or merely transferring an existing method to a new instrument? I would say that an existing method should dictate all of what you have listed.

[Peter Apps]

Hello,
The fuel lab that I work at has just bought a Perkin Elmer Clarus 580 GC, and we're running it with TotalChrom 6.3.2.0646. For those who have experience with this chromatograph and/or program, how long did it take for you to calibrate it? How many levels do you have and how many runs did it take to get as accurate as you wanted? We will mainly be using it to check the ethanol percentages in fuel samples, so that's the component we're focused on mostly. Any input is greatly appreciated.

In GC you don't really calibrate the instrument or software, you calibrate peak area vs known quantity of analyte by injecting standards. Most methods use a minimum of 5 levels of calibration standards.

In general accuracy does not increase just because you have done more runs - if a method is not working right you need to troubleshoot and/or tweak it, not just do more runs.

Peter