Update: 28 September, 2023
Agilent Technologies has developed a chemical sensor, the Agilent 4440A, which can rapidly distinguish among similar products with volatile constituents. The instrument consists of a modified Agilent headspace autosampler coupled directly to a modified Agilent mass selective detector. Unlike headspace gas chromatography with mass selective detection (HS/GC/MS), this system has no GC, and there is virtually no separation of the volatile constituents. Instead, the headspace volatiles are transferred directly to the mass selective sensor, which typically gives rise to a single broad peak composed of all the volatile constituents in the sample. Because the mass spectra of all these compounds are also overlaid, multivariate analysis and pattern recognition software are used to classify the samples. The advantages of this system over conventional HS/GC or HS/GC/MS are its speed and ease of use. Samples can be analyzed every 2 to 6 minutes, depending upon the amount of headspace equilibration time required, and operator training takes less than an hour. This application note discusses how the 4440A chemical sensor has been used to discriminate among various products. Most interestingly, this application note also shows how to use the information from the 4440A chemical sensor to identify unknowns.
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MD5 Checksum: 0F365E727DA105AB2E441C4AB085DA49
Publication date: 03 July, 2012
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