Alternative Carrier Gases for ASTM Methods

Introduction

A talk from the Chemicals Summit - Hydrocarbon Processing Symposium

Lee Marotta, a senior application scientist at PerkinElmer, presents on the topic of chromatographers investigating the use of alternative carrier gases to Helium. Helium is a common carrier gas in gas chromatography (GC) due to how fast the gas is. However, Helium is a finite natural resource, it is seeing rising costs, and some are seeing regional availability shortages. These factors are giving way to these types of investigations into alternative carrier gases. This presentation and studies were put together by Lee and Leeman Bennington, also from PerkinElmer, in which they focus on meeting ASTM Methods D3606, D4815, D5580 criteria using hydrogen and nitrogen and comparing these results to helium.