A new portable micro gas chromatograph for environmental analysis

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:230964

Overton, E B; Carney, K R; Dharmasena, H P; Stewart, M T; Ehrmann, U ^[1]

---

1. Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA (United States). Inst. for Environmental Studies

The introduction of the microchip based gas chromatograph (microGC) promised a revolution in chromatographic analysis in the field. The principle weakness of the commercial microGC has been, first and foremost, relatively high detection limits of 1 ppm (volume) in air. Sample preconcentrators that addressed the shortcomings of the microGC have been available from Louisiana State University for several years and, more recently, from the manufacturer of the microGC as well; but they were large and required constant attention from an operator. A greatly improved front end for the microGC, and possibly other instruments has recently been developed at LSU. A further limitation of the commercial microGC, and of portable GCs in general, has been a limited capability for performing semivolatile analyses without sacrificing portability. The instrument development group at LSU has developed preliminary versions of a similarly fast GC capable of analyzing semivolatile compounds in less than 5 minutes.

• OSTI ID: 230964
• Report Number(s): CONF-950209--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
DATA
DESIGN
FIELD TESTS
GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY
PORTABLE EQUIPMENT
VOLATILE MATTER