Latest News and Application Notes

From May 8-12, over fifty members of LECO's global Mass Spectrometry team and international leadership filled our customer experience center in Saint Joseph, Michigan. Sales and application representatives from over 25 different countries—Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and more!—joined with our local research and development team to share knowledge and ideas. It was a fantastic week of collaboration as we strengthened our bonds as one LECO around the world.

The world of GC-MS applications is constantly expanding, growing into novel applications and improving classical uses. To celebrate the advancements of this powerful technology, LECO and The Analytical Scientist created an eBook that takes a look at some of the emerging uses of GC-MS. From measuring volcanic emissions to predict eruptions to developing the ultimate untargeted technique with GCxGC-MS, these articles explore a variety of topics.

For many of us, COVID-19 changed the way we work. It changed the way we communicate, gather, and network. Large tradeshows like Pittcon moved virtual or shuttered their doors entirely, and sometimes, that wasn't the worst thing. Less time traveling meant more time available in the lab, attending to your instruments. But after three years of this, it's time to step away from your instruments and let automation take over.

Few things in the world bring people together like food. Flavor and aroma are often central pillars of a good time. Whether it’s developing a meat substitute or characterizing the subtle intricacies of liquor, the study of food, flavor, and aromas is critical to so many industries that touch everyone around the world.

The analysis of peppers for flavor profiles and food volatiles is not new. With a wide array of varieties, peppers find uses in not just food markets, but also pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Analyzing peppers isn't new. Finding ways to increase the sustainability and "green" qualities of those analyses, however, is an ongoing challenge, and one that Micaela Galletta, Mariosimone Zoccali, Donato Creti, Luigi Mondello, and Peter Q. Tranchida tackled in a recent study published in Green Analytical Chemistry.

How do you handle the analysis and characterization of a complex sample like whisky*? In a recent interview with eFood Lab International, Dr. Geraint (Taff) Morgan of the Applied Science & Technology Group at the Open University, UK, says a 1D quadrupole GC-MS is sufficient for routine analysis, but when he really wants to dig into the non-target analysis of a complex sample, he turns to GC-TOFMS and GCxGC-TOFMS, such as that employed by the LECO Pegasus^® BT 4D.

With ever-increasing demands on your time and resources, optimizing your workflow is essential. Learn how state of the art instrument and software solutions come together, to enhance your one- and two-dimensional gas chromatography applications (GC-MS and GCxGC-MS) in a collection of short webinars presented on Wednesday, November 30. These webinars will be presented twice for ease of international audiences.

Heavy fuel oil, also known as bunker fuel or residual fuel oil, is a complex mixture used primarily in the shipping industry. Over the years, the regulations on heavy fuel oil have become more stringent to control sulfur emissions that were damaging to the environment. As a result, this type of fuel is frequently limited to 0.5% sulfur by mass, and it is therefore critical to know the composition of your oil. Such a complex sample requires the sort of heavy lifting that can only be provided by a high-tech, high-resolution GCxGC mass spectrometer.

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has long been an invaluable tool in a chemist's belt. With its ability to tease apart the compounds in a sample, identifying even trace analytes, it is able to perform specific tests and pinpoint what, exactly, is in the material being analyzed. But what can you do when GC-MS isn't enough?

LECO recently concluded a webinar series on agricultural applications of our instruments with a presentation by Dr Frank Dorman of Dartmouth College, Department of Chemistry, formerly of Penn State University, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. While at Penn State, Frank worked on an environmental forensic investigation of wastewater applied to agricultural fields.