Description: Demands for high quality and pure oil are always the primary criteria in essential oil trade. Therefore, laboratory analysis is crucial to verify the chemical components and also detect the present of adulterant and impurities in the oil. Some chemical compounds, usually known as marker compounds are important indicator to determine the quality of oil.

Recommended sample: Essential oils

Facility: GC-FID (Agilent 7890B GC System); GC-MS (Agilent 7890B GC System coupled with Agilent 5977A MSD); Pocket refractometer (ATAGO PAL-3); Colorimeter (Lovibond® Tintometer Model F)

Column: Non-polar (Agilent DB-1 ms, Agilent DB-5 ms); Polar (Agilent DB-Wax)

Contact: Aizal (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Description: Gas chromatography (GC) is separation technique used to identify chemical composition in volatile samples. The injected liquid sample is vaporized, and travelled as mobile phase in special column, helped by inert carrier gas i.e., helium. Sample is interacted with column and the compounds are separated based on individual boiling point. Further improvement on the system has introduced new accessories integrated with GC system such as:

Headspace technology – Eliminates the need for sample preparation i.e., extraction process; and also, can be used as preliminary analysis for compounds of interest.

Solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) – Same concept as headspace, except this sampling technique is based on absorption of sample matrix into a special fiber, then desorption of sample is conducted into GC system for compounds separation and identification.

Odor detection port – Ability to detect individual odor from sample matrix to cater demands for olfactory study especially in perfumery and food industry.

Preparative system – Isolation and purification of individual chemical compound that eliminates the use of solvents compared to previous methods i.e., column chromatography.

Recommended sample: Essential oils

Facility: Headspace (Agilent 7697A Headspace Sampler); SPME (Supelco® SPME apparatus); Olfactory (Gerstel ODP system); Preparative GC (Agilent 7890B GC System combined with Gerstel Preparative system)

Contact: Aizal (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Description: Liquid chromatography (LC) is a technique used to separate a sample into its individual parts. This separation occurs based on the interactions of the sample with the mobile and stationary phases. Semipreparative LC refers to preparative LC performed on analytical (4–5 mm i.d.) or slightly larger (6–10 mm i.d.) columns. Preparative HPLC generally uses similar methods and analogous instrumentation as in analytical HPLC, but the pumps and detectors are designed for larger flow rates. Also, the final aim is different: in analytical HPLC the goal is to get high-quality data while in preparative HPLC the main goal is to get successful substance purification. Semi-preparative HPLC allows instead to purify certain amounts of substances (from microgram to lower-milligram quantities) following analytical identification and represents a link for the successful transition and upscaling from analytical HPLC to the preparative scale. Main application fields are the purification of biochemicals for research or clinical trials, the preparation of standards and also the isolation of commercial products such as active pharmaceutical compounds or chemical substances.

Recommended sample: Non-volatile samples (with optimized analytical HPLC method)

Facility: Semi preparative HPLC (Agilent 1260 Infinity II LC System) 

Column: Reverse-phase (Agilent Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C18) 

Contact: Aizal (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)