phase_dancer
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2001
- Messages
- 6,179
Wont it be grand when we can walk down the street and take a one minute gc/ms test on the corner of a street
Sorry to disappoint but the procedure takes some time. If the compounds present are either too similar, or differ from each other greatly in their mass / charge, longer retentions may be required to separate or completely elute a compound. This might take more than one run to optimise. Between each run the temp of the oven (column) and the injector port (depending upon method of delivery) must return to the preset value. It can take 20 mins to do this unless the chromatograph has cooling. It would also take a while to prepare the samples and run the references.
If a quick, accurate and affordable form of testing is to be developed, at this point in time it would more likely be ionization or Raman spec based. There have been some exciting developments recently, particularly in areas of wide spectrum camera sensors which are compact and extremely versatile. Raman spec looks set to become recognized as a very accurate form of analysis now that semi conductor blue lasers are dropping in price.
photonics spectra
Coherent
The above company is a leading edge player in optical device development.
With the optimum Raman device you would place your powder or pill on a viewing platform, hit it with the laser and after some complex computer calcs, presto; all the compounds present would be identified.
-> link to Raman spec paper