Chromatography Forum

Hail fellow students of Science,

Recently I was offered a research position involving gas chromatography. Excitedly I accepted only to learn that the only person who knew how to run the GC we own had left a year back . Now, of course, being the undergrad work mule, it is my job to comb through manuals to try and figure out how to work the beautiful machine. So I read the manuals, and I’ve learned a lot about the GC, but have no blazing idea on how to set up some test runs to make sure the thing is running correctly. The manuals give no sample test runs or directions on how to really start the beast up at all.

So my plight is this, can anyone give me a fairly simple, lamens terms list of things to do to run some test trials on a GC? I will be running it for FID analysis, and the rig is a Shimadzu GC-14b. Also, if there are any general guidelines on what to not do to screw up the machine, from your experience? Anything will help, last time I tried working the thing I just starred at it for a good ten minutes, jiggled a few things, and then went back to reading.

I appreciate any help you can offer,

Thanks,

MaximusBrutus

I could give you a list, but it would not be simple, and each step would involve some technical knowledge that you do not have.

By far the best thing that you can do is to contact the local Shimadzu supplier and get them to give you the basic training. You will then know where the knobs and buttons are to change the settings, what the settings are suppposed to be, whether the gasses, electrical and data are plugged into the right holes, and how the software runs (if you are running software for control or data processing). They might want to charge money for this service, but it will be worth it.

Good luck

Peter

The above advice would be a great benefit as far as what buttons to push when for your particular GC. You may not have to pay as it would be to the vendor's benefit to have your instrument running again. Good results stimulate demand and no good results come from idle instruments.

Additional background and method development information can be gleaned from any of the free chromatography 1 day seminars that are regularly offered by numerous instrument and column vendors. If you check the FAQs here, there are also similar resources available to all.

As to test runs, if you have a FID detector and almost any type of column, commonly available gasses (butane, methane) and (separate run) a couple of microliters of any tannic distilled spirit (whiskey, rye, scotch...) will yield some valuable diagnostic information and other peaks to work with.

I think he(?) would need more than a couple of microliters of the distilled spirit. Oh, I get it now. You are thinking about injecting it into the GC. What about a comparison between injecting it into the GC and into the GC operator? On a more serious note, you might check to see if there are any test chromatograms from the columns you have. These generally have the method parameters, though you may have to buy the test mix. As Peter suggested you might also try your local Shimadzu rep and see what they use to test newly installed equipment.