International GERSTEL Symposium 2021

Since 2005, GERSTEL has sponsored a regular Applications Seminar in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where users talk about their lab challenges and how they use advances in sample prep and introduction solve their problems. Due to the current COVID situation the 2021 Seminar took place in a virtual format.

Now we are extending this symposium to an international level and organizing an additional seminar in English.

At the seminar, users and partners with practical experience will be informed first-hand about the use of GERSTEL devices and systems in their everyday laboratory work and applications. The range of topics extends from the currently hotly debated determination of PFAS an Mycotoxines, through the possibilities of method optimization in the dynamic headspace (DHS), the very fast measurement of contanimants in Air from "gas-collection-tubes" and the automatic standard-preparation for a variety of laboratory tasks.

Programm:

08:50 a.m. : Welcome

09:00 a.m. : State-of-the-art Sample preparation techniques for Flavor Analysis

• Presenter: Christoph Devos / RIC | Group

Food and beverage companies rely on accurate and detailed aroma profiling to deliver high-quality products with consistent key flavour compound profiles and to develop new products. Quality and reliability of aroma analysis by capillary gas chromatography (GC) is greatly affected by the applied sample preparation technique. Conventional solvent-based extraction techniques can now be miniaturized and automated, but still suffer sometimes from severe matrix contamination resulting in poor chromatographic performance. New GC technologies can be implemented to avoid such matrix influence on performance.

Solvent-based extraction techniques are also increasingly being replaced by solventless techniques, such as dynamic headspace sampling (DHS), which is suitable for the characterization of aromas in food and beverages. The technique can also be fully automated and delivers full aroma profiling covering a wide volatility range due to less selectivity than other headspace enrichment techniques. Besides the principle of DHS, the flexibility of working in different DHS modes and the high sensitivity that can be reached with DHS enrichment, it will be shown how to successfully implement DHS for aroma profiling purposes depending on the type of food matrix and the volatility range that needs to be covered.

09:30 a.m. : The secret power of your GERSTEL MPS: automated liquid handling and its many applications

• Presenter: Camilla Liscio / Anatune Ltd

Automation is getting more and more established in the analytical community. In fact, autosamplers are a constant presence in any analytical laboratory. The GERSTEL MPS is amongst them, being successfully employed by many GERSTEL users. Nevertheless, the use of the MPS is often limited to sample introduction tasks such as headspace sampling, injection and thermal desorption leaving unexplored a whole array of additional capabilities which could bring valuable benefits to your laboratory workflows.

Automated liquid handling is the very foundation of every successful automated sample preparation. How can you harness this unexploited power of your MPS? You can start with the basis. Accurate preparation of stock and calibration standards is crucial to achieve reliable and reproducible analytical results. However, this process is often time consuming and sometimes biased by human error. Automated standard preparation can deliver results at least as good as those obtained by an experienced analyst while removing the possibility of human error and improving batch-to-batch reproducibility, with GERSTEL Maestro Software featuring several options for the liquid handling fine tuning.

But there is more.

In this talk we will outline the foundation of successful liquid handling, giving an overview of the different applications, from the preparation of your calibration curve to more complex sample preparation workflows.

10:00 a.m. : Confined Space entry monitoring - and how can this be automated

• Presenter: Andreas Koblitz / Ineos

In order to be able to enter tanks and columns of a production plants for inspections and maintenance, it is necessary to check the air in these parts for composition and contaminants. For this purpose, gas samples are taken, which are then analyzed in the laboratory.

The official requirements will change in the near future, so that the measurement technology must be adapted to these more stringent measurement values. In this presentation it will be shown which sample introduction technique is used to transfer the air sample from the gas collection tube into the SYFT-MS, and that the automated measurement results are available in a very short time.

10:30 a.m. : Automated sample preparation in the field of LC-MS - online SPE and LLE on some example applications

• Presenter: Thomas Brandsch / GERSTEL

An LC-MS measurement is often preceded by an extraction, which results in enrichment of the analytes and/or purification of an extract. There are various possibilities for automating a solid-phase or liquid/liquid extraction. Some of them are shown by the example of the analysis of glyphosate, PFAS and mycotoxins.