As a consulting laboratory, your reputation is one of the most important factors of your business. The ability to not only provide accurate results with confidence and helpful assistance and education in a timely manner, but also to communicate it to your clients is essential to continued success. Ray Marsili, owner of Marsili Consulting Group and a Food-Flavor Chemist, knew the instruments he procured for his lab could very well spell the difference between success or struggle.
Success actually bred struggle in Marsili’s lab. As his team developed more sensitive extraction techniques for food flavors and off flavors, coelution was a growing problem. More compounds being successfully extracted meant more compounds coeluted on chromatograms, which meant more time was necessary to attempt to tease the peaks apart. Marsili needed a better way to resolve these coelutions.
As with many scientists, Marsili began his instrument search in relevant articles in trusted journals. He made note of the GC-MS instruments used in similar and relevant applications. The Pegasus series continually showed up in his research as a highly sensitive GC-MS with peak deconvolution capabilities. Though LECO was relatively young in the field of chromatographic instruments at the time, we already had a well-established record for service quality and instrument reliability in our elemental determinators and other products. Curious if this existed for the chromatographic instruments as well, Marsili reached out to LECO users that he knew and trusted.
“Everyone was happy they purchased a LECO Pegasus GC-TOFMS or a BT GC-TOFMS,” he remembered. Current users were happy to give him outstanding recommendations for LECO’s instrument reliability, performance, and service.
Marsili decided to purchase his first Pegasus in 2012 and has been a satisfied customer ever since. More than just the sensitive and reliable instrumentation he’s acquired, Marsili’s favorite part of using LECO’s products has been the ChromaTOF® brand software. “The software is surprisingly helpful and comprehensive. It allows us to complete our projects and analytical reports faster than using other instrumentation offerings.” It was the simplest peak deconvolution software to use of any he saw on the market.
With help from Pegasus, Marsili Consulting Group was able to detect numerous off-flavor chemicals in samples where they had previously escaped detection. “Detection sensitivity with the LECO BT is extraordinary,” Marsili said. “We have been able to detect key malodor and off-flavor chemicals (e.g., geosmin) at extremely low concentrations that we could not achieve with other MS systems.”
With confidence in his results and the reliability of his instruments as well as LECO’s ability to quickly step up and help in the rare instances when something does go wrong, Marsili absolutely recommends working with LECO to anyone looking for better peak deconvolution or higher sensitivity in their instruments.
Don’t just take it from us! Listen to Ray Marsili talk about the peak deconvolution capabilities of ChromaTOF software in the Understanding Off-flavors and Malodors on-demand webinar, available with our Flavor and Aroma resources.
