Why does my GC Need Clean Gas?

Description

Clean gas is pretty important to gas chromatography, but what contaminants should we be most concerned with? We’ll discuss common contaminants and what we should try to manage with different carrier and fuel gasses.

Additional Resources

• Don’t forget about your lab’s moisture traps/filters

Restek Recommended Tools & Parts

• Gas Purification

Transcript

Hey, chromatographers. Welcome to another Restek Tip. And in this discussion, we’re going to focus on the importance of cleaning our gases when doing gas chromatography.

So, let’s talk about our carrier gas, for example. We’re concerned about three principle contaminants with that – oxygen, because it can damage most GC capillary columns; hydrocarbons; and water. They can contribute background and other signal problems. And, even if we’re purchasing high-purity carrier gas, and we should be, we’re still going to want to filter because these contaminants can be introduced through leaks or other ways they can migrate into the system such as a bad tank of gas, too. Now, not all of our gasses fall under that same situation though.

Let’s talk about a fuel gas for our FID, for example. Our FID uses an air-hydrogen flame. We need the oxygen for our flame. But it is still important to filter out hydrocarbons and moisture. Those can contribute to baseline problems with getting a good, stable detector signal. So, again, different gas, different situation; but, still important to filter some critical contaminants from it. So, as you look at the gasses that are being introduced into your system, choose the right filters to remove the critical contaminants from each of those gasses to get the best performance for your application.

Thanks very much for joining us for this Restek Tip.