Moving Towards Sustainable Gas Chromatography Laboratories

Helium shortages mean that laboratories will soon need a sustainable alternative to this non-renewable resource. Also, the struggle to maintain a consistent helium supply is causing a drop in productivity in many labs and the cost of helium continues to rise.

Progressing to a more sustainable laboratory is possible by switching to a multi-gas system. Switching to hydrogen, for example, protects laboratories against future helium shortages and is more sustainable because high-purity hydrogen can be generated from water. Hydrogen offers faster chromatographic separations, shorter thermal desorption methods and lower-temperature separations than helium, drastically increasing laboratory throughput, extending consumables’ lifetimes and extending maintenance intervals. Hydrogen also produces the same high-quality data as helium but at a greatly reduced cost.

By attending the presentation you’ll learn about:

• The current situation with the global supply of helium
• The benefits of using hydrogen as a carrier gas
• Configuring thermal desorption–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analytical instrumentation to work safely with hydrogen as a carrier gas as well as with helium and nitrogen
• The pros and cons of different hydrogen sources (bulk supply vs gas generator)
• Common pitfalls when switching carrier gas and how to avoid them

Presenter: Ed Connor

joined PEAK Scientific in February 2013 as a GC product specialist and now functions as a Product Manager. He has been working on a number of collaborative projects with PEAK customers and the major LC-MS and GC instrument manufacturers worldwide. The main focus of these collaborations has been to look at conversion from helium to hydrogen or nitrogen carrier gas for GC applications but he has also worked on ELSD nitrogen gas solutions and nitrogen generators for LC-MS instruments.

Presenter: Jessica Berger

graduated from the University of Glamorgan (now University of South Wales) with a BSc. degree in Chemistry. She joined Markes International in 2012 as an Inside Sales Specialist, before being promoted to Product Manager for the thermal desorption business unit. In this role, Jessica is responsible for both the introduction of new thermal desorption products, as well as the management of the exiting product line.