Tekmar Talk Blog

Preventive maintenance for analytical instrumentation should be scheduled and performed proactively. It is something that should not be put on the back burner. Establishing and adhering to a preventive maintenance schedule is beneficial in many ways:

• Reduces the risk of instrument failure
• Decreases unexpected downtime
• Increases laboratory productivity
• Extends instrumentation lifetime
• Saves money

Water vapor entering the gas chromatograph (GC) inlet, column, and, ultimately, the mass spectrometer (MS) can minimize the sensitivity of our early eluting compounds, including our gases. It can also cause poor peak shape, compounds to co-elude, and shift in retention time, even in compounds outside of the water peak. So, once the water is introduced into our system, it starts to wreak havoc on all our compounds. Some say water doesn’t affect column phase or lifespan, but some have seen an effect, especially if you’re running a lot of samples; water can shorten the column life of your GC column and can cause vacuum issues if you’re using a MS system, which could lead to shorter filament lifetime and having to clean the source more often.

Throughout this blog series, we’ve discussed ways to minimize the amount of water vapor introduced to the GC-MS, using Teledyne Tekmar’s moisture control fitting and application control. We can continue to control moisture not only through this hardware designed for the Purge and Trap, but also through method parameters we can adjust and using smart method parameters on the GC.

The last two Purge and Trap (P&T) settings we will discuss in this blog series might be the most important for moisture control in this volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis: desorb and bake settings.

We can adjust our desorb time to help reduce the amount of moisture we put onto the gas chromatograph (GC) and mass spectrometer (MS). A longer desorb time will remove more of compounds from the analytical trap and send them to the GC, but this includes water, leading to a longer water peak in the total ion chromatogram. If the desorb time is shortened, less of that analyte material is transferred to the GC, but we will have a much shorter water peak, giving the compound peaks better shape and resolution. This gives us an opportunity for method optimization with the desorb settings both in time and temperature.

Total Organic Carbon (TOC) plays a vital role in today’s laboratory. There are two main types of TOC systems in today’s market: UV-Persulfate oxidation, and high temperature combustion oxidation. While these two systems have some areas of overlap, they offer different solutions for the laboratory. 

Read more to learn about the differences between these two systems.

Well, the season is changing here in the Midwest and sample collection time will soon be upon us. In the laboratory, much like at home, a good spring cleaning goes a long way.

For Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) analysis, multiple cleaning procedures or preventative maintenance techniques should be employed.

Total organic carbon (TOC) analyzers play a significant role in our pharmaceutical testing laboratories and manufacturing facilities. Water is a major excipient and solvent used in pharmaceutical manufacturing and cleaning processes. It must be tested regularly for TOC. TOC analyzers are used globally to measure the amount of organic carbon that is present in water and in the equipment for cleaning validation. TOC is also used to test water sources for injection and has other uses within the pharmaceutical landscape.

In part one of this series, we learned why water vapor is bad for volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis. In part two, we will explore ways we can optimize moisture control in the Purge and Trap (P&T) system.

What are the three worst enemies of low-level total organic carbon (TOC) analysis? Contamination, contamination, and contamination. Why stated three times? Because contamination can come from at least three different sources. The top three ways contamination can be inadvertently introduced into a TOC analyzer are reagents, laboratory glassware, and samples.

Analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is an essential part of environmental monitoring, flavor and fragrance analysis, and analysis in the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries. Gas Chromatograph (GC) columns and detectors, namely Mass Spectrometers (MS), do not perform well in the presence of water. Before the sample is introduced to the GC, it must become a vapor.

For this reason, there are many samples, such as

With today’s blog, let’s get to know the employees of Teledyne Tekmar/Leeman Labs. The next person I I would like to introduce to you is Joe Barta.

Joe is a Field Service Engineer for Teledyne Tekmar based out of Chicago. He services Tekmar VOC and TOC products, as well as Leeman ICP and mercury analyzers. Besides servicing instruments, he has also trained the service engineers for our international distributors in Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. Joe will be starting his 20th year at Tekmar at the end of January 2023.

Let’s ask Joe some questions to get to know him better.