Supplying Nitrogen for LC-MS with an In-House Gas Generator Improves Laboratory Safety, Increases Efficiency, and Reduces Cost

Supplying Nitrogen for LC-MS with an In-House Gas Generator Improves Laboratory Safety, Increases Efficiency, and Reduces Cost Peter Froelich, President Peak Media, Franklin, MA Judy Silva, Marketing Communications Manager Parker Hannifin Corporation Filtration and Separation Division Haverhill, Massachusetts In-house generation of gases for analytical instrumentation such as nitrogen for liquid chromatography with mass spectroscopic (LC-MS) detection provides a number of benefits including a significant increase in laboratory safety and a reduction in cost compared to providing the gas via high...

Safety benefits of in-house generation of nitrogen In-house generation of gases provides a significant number of safety related benefits, including: • An in-house generator generates only a small amount of gas in a given time period and the amount can be controlled by the user. As an example, the Parker Balston N2-45 nitrogen generator can provide a maximum flow of the gas of 133 L/min at a maximum pressure of 140 psig. In contrast, a standard compressed nitrogen tank has an interior pressure greater than 2000 psi when full. If a leak were to occur in the system when an in- house generator is...

Table 2 Annual Costs, In House Generation of Nitrogen versus the use of High Pressure Tanks (in US $) • 1 order/month @ $30 processing costs Figure 2: A large number of fibers are bundled together to provide an extremely large surface area for the permeation of oxygen and water. a significant amount of additional plumbing may be required to provide both gases to the detector. When an inhouse generator is employed, it is easy to change the oxygen concentration by simply changing the pressure of the input gas. In-house production of nitrogen is less expensive than the use of gas tanks An important...