Ron Majors presents the second part of his yearly report on new products introduced at Pittcon 2011. This installment covers
gas chromatography columns, sample preparation products, and hardware, accessories, and small tabletop instruments.
Pittcon 2011 Conference and Expo (more formally known as the 62nd Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied
Spectroscopy) returned to the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta March 13–18, 2011, after a 13-year hiatus. This year's
event hosted nearly 800 instrument manufacturers and laboratory suppliers in more than 1700 booths. In addition to attending
the exposition, the conferees listened to around 1800 technical presentations (orals, posters, workshops, invited and contributed
talks, and award symposia), checked numerous company seminar rooms, or attended one or more of 84 short courses.
Compared to Pittcon 2010 (1,2), attendance at this year's event was basically flat. Still, Pittcon remains the most important
yearly international analytical exhibition where companies introduce their latest instruments, instrument accessories, software,
columns, sample preparation, and other consumable products. Because many past attendees have purchased one or more new products
within three months of attending the show, most exhibitors attempt to maximize their booth traffic to meet as many potential
customers as possible.
The purpose of this report is to provide information about many of the new separation consumables and accessory products that
were displayed at Pittcon 2011. In some cases, products that were introduced during 2010 but after Pittcon 2010 (1,2) were
included for reasons of completeness. The information is based on manufacturers' responses to a questionnaire mailed in late
2010. Because of space limitations and the fact that some manufacturers did not respond to the questionnaire, this report
cannot be considered an exhaustive listing of all new products introduced in Atlanta. However, over the years, these Pittcon
introduction summaries have provided a good source of information that would be difficult for one individual to gather during
the four days of the exhibition. In addition, the products introduced have shown definite correlations to current research,
development, and application activity in the separation sciences. As in previous years, columns and other products recommended by their manufacturers primarily for biomolecule separations
or sample preparation are denoted in the tables with the designation BIO. Some of these products may be used for general high
performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separations as well, but their main emphasis is for biological samples.
Last month (3), I covered HPLC columns. In this month's coverage, I will look at gas chromatography (GC) columns, sample preparation
products, hardware, accessories, and a few small tabletop instruments.
Gas Chromatography
Table I: Gas chromatography and SFC columns
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Although GC is considered to be a relatively mature separation technique, new GC columns continue to be introduced each year
at Pittcon (Table I). This year saw the introduction of nine new GC columns: seven wall-coated open tubular (WCOT) and two
porous-layer open tubular (PLOT) columns from six vendors. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has been receiving more
attention, and this "intermediate" separation technique is catching on, especially in the pharmaceutical area for preparative
applications. Packed SFC columns are more like HPLC columns but have some unique phases not found in a typical LC laboratory,
so I decided to include them in this section instead of in my Pittcon Part I coverage (3). Three vendors displayed SFC columns,
including one with a sub-2-µm particle column that provides the same throughput advantage in SFC as it does in HPLC.
Applications-specific GC columns are always popular introductions at Pittcon. This year, a majority of the columns were for
specific application areas. GC has found widespread usage in the petroleum industry. The PLOT columns were developed for the
analysis of volatiles in hydrocarbon streams. The Restek (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania) MXT-Alumina Bond PLOT column was recommended
for C1-C3 isomers and alkanes up to C12, while the Agilent J&W Scientific (Santa Clara, California) Select Low Sulfur column was designed for trace-level determination
of volatile sulfur components in hydrocarbon streams. A column for simulated distillation methods in the petrochemical industry
was introduced by Phenomenex (Torrance, California): A glass coating was applied to the interior of a metal column, then a
special crosslinked phase was bonded to the glass that allows for operation at temperatures as high as 450 °C.
Figure 1: Fast analysis of PAHs using a microbore capillary column. Column: 12 m × 0.10 mm NSP-PAH (610). (Courtesy of J&K
Scientific.)
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In the environmental domain, an applications-specific column for the United States Environmental Protection Agency's polynuclear
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) Methods 610 and 8100 was introduced by J&K Scientific (Milton, Ontario, Canada). Using a 12 m
× 0.10 mm capillary column, the separation of 18 PAHs can be accomplished in less than 11 min with full resolution of the
critical pairs (shown in red in Figure 1). Besides the 16 EPA PAHs, the test mixture also included 1-methyl and 2-methyl naphthalenes
to satisfy the Canadian standards for PAHs. The results were equally impressive for split and splitless sample injections.
Other applications-specific GC capillary columns introduced at Pittcon included those for chiral separations, biodiesel fuel
separations, residual solvents in pharmaceuticals separations, and blood alcohol separations.
Columns for SFC are based on HPLC-like packings but contain different phase chemistries, usually normal-phase materials. For
example, 2-ethylpyridine is a popular SFC phase for the SFC separation of basic compounds; this phase has not proven to be
popular in HPLC. Some SFC phases, such as pentafluorophenyl (PFP) and diethylaminopropyl (DEAP), have found use in LC. Silica
gel itself also has been used as an SFC adsorbent.
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