Gas Chromatography Practice
Posted on | May 4, 2009 | No Comments
We have one units of Gas Chromatography Thermal Conductive Detector (GC-TCD), two units of Gas Chromatography Thermal Conductive Detector – Flame Ionization Detector (GC-TCD/FID) and one unit of Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) in our research group – Chemical Reaction Engineering Group (CREG). We also have another Gas Chromatography Flame Ionisation Detector (GC-FID) Perkin Elmer brand, but it’s very old already. CREG has a number of GCs but unfortunately, the research group members are mostly new and could barely operate the GCs. The GCs were handled by previous post graduate students few years ago and the transfer of technology did not occur due to laps of post graduate students and research officers. Now that a new batch of students are here, we need to really understand and know how to run and troubleshoot our GCs.
Personally, I’ve used GC-TCS during my masters 8 years ago. Unfortunately, the skills and knowledge of GC has deteriorated throughout the years because I was no longer working in the research arena. Now that I’m back into the academic and research field, I need to master all techniques and secrets on how to use all type of GCs. I’m going to be permanently here because now I’m a staff who’ll be using the GC for my pH.D this July.
So far, just now, the whole day, we troubleshoot a problem in our GC-TCD. It was the same GC that I used for my masters degree before. The problem here was that the methane peak changes time. Methane peak was previously detected at 6.4 minutes using a method called plasma.m which was established by Istadi, a successful pH.D student who graduated from CREG 3 years ago. However, when a new pH.D colleague from Iran tested the methane after a minor repair by Agilent engineers 3 weeks ago, the methane peak was not detected at 6.4 minutes. A big peak was detected at 4.5 minutes and we wasn’t sure what was that. We did not hear any valve sound which we normally hear when it takes the gaseous sample. I checked the problem and tried to trouble shoot it on Thursday together with others but to no avail, we can’t because we simply don’t have the expertise.
Want to know the continuation, please wait for my follow up story about the GC adventure…
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