Pittcon 2009 GC Systems and Accessories Review -

Email|Print|

|Save|License

Pittcon 2009 GC Systems and Accessories Review

May 1, 2009
By: John V. Hinshaw
LCGC North America

12 3 4

John V. Hinshaw

The Pittsburgh Conference retains its place as the preeminent annual analytical sciences meeting in the U.S. This year's conference witnessed the withdrawal of a number of companies from the exhibition. Most notable for gas chromatographers was Varian Instruments' choice to present posters and papers on their latest developments at the conference while shifting sales, marketing, and application information to an online exhibit at http://www.thevarianexperience.com/. Reflecting this trend, the number of registered exhibitors was down from 2008's level, although the total number of registrants was only slightly less than last year's New Orleans venue. The number of nonexhibitor conferees increased a little, a trend that is in line with past increments seen whenever the conference moves north to Chicago. This year's technical program was as strong as ever, with more than 2400 presentations that included expanded conferee networking sessions and over 100 short courses. At this year's meeting, the American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry (ACS-DAC) hosted a celebration of the 25th anniversary of its Subdivision of Chromatography and Separation Chemistry (SCSC) along with six symposia as part of their ongoing coprogramming with the Pittsburgh Conference. Next year, the conference returns to Orlando, Florida from February 28 through March 5, 2010, and in 2011 it will be held in Atlanta, Georgia.

This annual "GC Connections" installment reviews gas chromatography (GC) instrumentation and accessories shown at this year's Pittcon or introduced during the previous year at conferences such as ASMS (June 1–8, 2008). For a review of new chromatography columns and accessories, please see "Column Watch" in the March and April 2009 issues of LCGC (1,2). The information presented here is based upon manufacturers' replies to questionnaires, as well as on additional information from manufacturers' press releases, websites, and product literature, and not upon actual use or experience of the author. During the conference, I took time to walk around the convention aisles and see some of the new products firsthand as well as discover a number of items that were not covered by the questionnaires. Every effort has been made to collect accurate information, but due to the preliminary nature of some of the material, LCGC North America cannot be responsible for errors or omissions. This article cannot be considered to be a complete record of all new GC products shown at this year's Pittcon because not all manufacturers chose to respond to the questionnaire, nor is all of the submitted information included here due to the limited available space.

GC Instruments

Table I: GC instrument systems

Again at this year's Pittcon, GC instruments continued to show a surprising number of new product introductions or major upgrades for a mature science. Although no awards were won, the array of new offerings was broad and innovative. See Table I for the list. Agilent introduced the model 7820A GC system as a follow-on to the model 7890A GC system that was introduced two years ago, also here in Chicago. The new model is targeted for routine, standardized GC methods with its simplified keypad and available inlets, detectors, and accessories that cover routine applications outside of those found in research or infrequently used methodologies. The model 5000B from Konik brings additional horsepower to the company's offerings in a system that is useful for standard GC analyses as well as conventional multidimensional methods. In addition, this system can perform high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)–GC or HPLC–GC×GC separations.

The remaining new GC systems all incorporate mass spectrometry (MS) detectors as standard, the most unique of which is O.I. Corporation's Ion Camera nonscanning dispersive mass spectrometer, which incorporates an optional micro-GC inlet and column assembly that are fully integrated into the mass spectrometer case, along with a small, high-pressure carrier gas supply tank. The unit is field portable and runs on 24 V. Shimadzu's MDGC/GCMS-2010 system integrates a dual-oven Deans switching multidimensional GC system with their model 2010 quadrupole mass spectrometer. The integrated Deans switching device is chemically deactivated and has no moving parts. Finally, Leco's TrueTOF HT GC–MS system combines the company's benchtop time-of-flight mass spectrometer with their ChromaTOF software to yield an instrument system suitable for high-speed GC–MS at spectral acquisition rates up to 80 Hz.

12 3 4