Tired of carrying around those expensive helium tanks? No problem! You can still perform USEPA method 8260 or 524.3 without using helium. Running strictly off of gas generators, the Atomx is able to purge your sample with nitrogen and you can use hydrogen for the GC carrier gas. With the Atomx, all you have to do is change the gas line and in the software click Tools, Configuration, and Option tab and hit Nitrogen (see picture below). We didn’t even have to make any purge and trap method changes to get similar performance as using helium.
The biggest difference will be on the GC/MS side of things due to changes in retention times and in some cases even ionization patterns since hydrogen is a reactive gas. You may need to modify you GC-MS method a little, we found that a slower flow rate and lower split ratio helps.
Before you change your GC-MS over to hydrogen, be sure to check with the manufacturer to see if they recommend any hardware changes or have any applications or methods available for running hydrogen.
Please click on the links below to check out our application notes on this topic!
Using Alternative Carrier Gases for US EPA VOC Drinking Water Methods
Using Hydrogen as An Alternative Carrier Gas for US EPA 8260