Moving towards sustainable gas chromatography laboratories

Webinar overview

Helium shortages mean that laboratories will soon need a sustainable alternative to this non-renewable resource. Also, the struggle to maintain a consistent helium supply is causing a drop in productivity in many labs and the cost of helium continues to rise.

Progressing to a more sustainable laboratory is possible by switching to a multi-gas system. Switching to hydrogen, for example, protects laboratories against future helium shortages and is more sustainable because high-purity hydrogen can be generated from water. Hydrogen offers faster chromatographic separations, shorter thermal desorption methods and lower-temperature separations than helium, drastically increasing laboratory throughput, extending consumables’ lifetimes and extending maintenance intervals. Hydrogen also produces the same high-quality data as helium but at a greatly reduced cost.

By attending the presentation you’ll learn about:

• The current situation with the global supply of helium
• The benefits of using hydrogen as a carrier gas
• Configuring thermal desorption–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analytical instrumentation to work safely with hydrogen as a carrier gas as well as with helium and nitrogen
• The pros and cons of different hydrogen sources (bulk supply vs. gas generator)
• Common pitfalls when switching carrier gas and how to avoid them