Low Thermal Mass (LTM) technology was developed by RVM Scientific and is now offered as a retrofit to existing Agilent 5890 and 6890 GCs by GERSTEL as the Modular Accelerated Column Heater (MACH). The technology involves combining any length standard capillary GC column, a Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD) based thermal measurement system, and a precision controlled heating element in a bundle over the full length of a column. The bundle is wrapped with a ceramic twine and coiled to a 5” diameter torus that is covered with a metal foil. These column modules can then be heated outside the GC oven with heated transfer lines to the GC’s injector and detector going through the oven door and the GC oven. This technology enables fast heating (up to 1800°C per minute), fast cooling (350°C to 35°C in 2 minutes or less), as well as independent temperature control of up to 4 column modules on one GC platform. A mixture of C5 through C44 n-alkanes can be separated in less than 4 minutes. The combination of fast GC capability and independent temperature control of multiple column modules on one GC enables efficient dual column separation. For example, the separation of 20 standard pesticides can be accomplished in about 3 minutes. This note will review the LTM technology, the MACH hardware, and present data to demonstrate the increased speed of analysis.
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