Agilent vs. Shimadzu
Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:02 am
We have 5 Agilent GCMS's and 1 Agilent LCMS and after much through and research I'm breaking a 25 year tradition and have just ordered a Shimadzu GCMS.
I'm hoping to connect with other Shimadzu GCMS users and compare notes. I spent a day in Columbia, Maryland evaluating their newest system and was very pleased with both the instrument and the company's customer service.
One of the most important features that helped sway me was the ability to do "fast analysis" with up to a 9 ml/min column flow rate compared to Agilent's max of 2ml/min on their standard 5975 GCMS. Yes, I know, I know, I could use a 0.1mm column (instead of the rugged 30 meter 0.35 HP5MS, or use a much shorter column and possibly get the same or close speed of analysis; but I don't want to sacrifce separation and even more importantly we work with dilute and shoot street drug samples of unknown concentration and added cutting agents, and I'd kill the delicate little 0.1 mm column in a week if not a day.
I tested the Shimadzu out at 7 ml/min flow rate during the demo and it cuts our run time of a 25 drug mix from 9.5 min to 3.5 with great separation and sensitivity.
I'll also have simultaneous NPD analysis of a split injection to two columns but haven't done much research on this aspect. I remember the bad old days of ornery NPD beads that would rather faint than do constant work at reproducible sensitivity.
Does anyone have experience using the Shimadzu FTD version of a NPD detector. Can it keep up with 24/7 operation without being too finnicky?
Pardes
I'm hoping to connect with other Shimadzu GCMS users and compare notes. I spent a day in Columbia, Maryland evaluating their newest system and was very pleased with both the instrument and the company's customer service.
One of the most important features that helped sway me was the ability to do "fast analysis" with up to a 9 ml/min column flow rate compared to Agilent's max of 2ml/min on their standard 5975 GCMS. Yes, I know, I know, I could use a 0.1mm column (instead of the rugged 30 meter 0.35 HP5MS, or use a much shorter column and possibly get the same or close speed of analysis; but I don't want to sacrifce separation and even more importantly we work with dilute and shoot street drug samples of unknown concentration and added cutting agents, and I'd kill the delicate little 0.1 mm column in a week if not a day.
I tested the Shimadzu out at 7 ml/min flow rate during the demo and it cuts our run time of a 25 drug mix from 9.5 min to 3.5 with great separation and sensitivity.
I'll also have simultaneous NPD analysis of a split injection to two columns but haven't done much research on this aspect. I remember the bad old days of ornery NPD beads that would rather faint than do constant work at reproducible sensitivity.
Does anyone have experience using the Shimadzu FTD version of a NPD detector. Can it keep up with 24/7 operation without being too finnicky?
Pardes
