Facilities

The Agilent GC-MS 6890N

GCMS is a powerful tool for identifying and quantifying volatile and semi-volatile compounds in a variety of samples. The gas chromatograph functions to separate a mixture into its constituents and the mass spectrometer performs the analysis which provides a "fingerprint" of the compound. This fingerprint can be searched for in libraries of fingerprints to make an identification of unknowns.

GC-MS is most suited to smaller molecules. These are not normally volatile under GC conditions; they have to be derivatised before analysis. This in itself is not a problem, but it does introduce an extra step in the procedure but does lead to better separation and resolution of compounds. The Agilent 6890N system features electronic pneumatic controls (EPC) of all gas flow and pressures. Built-in sensors automatically compensate for ambient changes in temperature and barometric pressure differences to reach more accurate and reproducible results. This reduces the fequency that the instrument needs recalibrating. The detector used is a Mass Selective Detector (MSD) single quadrupole unit.