Technical Expertise

An excellent review entitled “The Rise and Fall of Expertise in Gas Chromatography” was written by Ronald E. Majors in LCGC North America, May 1, 2006 edition.

A brief excerpt, eloquently stated only as Ron Majors could, follows:

“During the last 20 years, most of the “centers of excellence” have disappeared, or had their activities greatly curtailed. Universities have failed to replace retiring faculty whose efforts in analytical chemistry contributed so much to our analytical advances. We no longer have people like Desty, Grob, Bayer, Pretorius, Keulemans, Cramers, Schomburg, Verzele, and innumerable others that made such meaningful contributions to GC. At the same time, today’s instruments have been made so simple to operate that many new users use a “black box” approach and regard even a cursory knowledge of basic GC as unnecessary. GC courses are still available, but too many analysts fail to recognize their educational deficiencies. Virtually any untrained individual can simply push a start button that triggers an automated injection, and a preselected automated program takes over. The controlled sequence can then culminate in a printout of solute retention times, peak widths at half heights, and area counts, data that too many users accept as infallible. Many commercial laboratories are under constant pressure to process more samples in less time, and management, soothed by a steady flow of seemingly accurate information, feels scant need for educational courses. All of these factors have combined to create the environment that I assume Kurt Grob had feared, and the expertise of the average practicing chromatographer began a continuous decline dating from the late 1970s.”

(The full article may be found by searching the archives of LCGC Magazine http://www.lcgcmag.com)

Our laboratories have this depth of knowledge. We concentrate on GC and the various complimentary processes of sample introduction with numerous detection techniques. Our management team has over 20 years of individual experience in performing GC and LC experimentation, each having their own sub-specialty that can be combined to solve today’s purity and impurity problems. If you are looking for a company with depth and history in GC and LC, you have come to the right place.