Ronald E. Majors
|
Pittcon 2008 — the 59th Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy — was held in New Orleans,
Louisiana, March 1–7, 2008, the first time the Conference has returned there since the Katrina disaster. This year's event
hosted more than 1150 instrument manufacturers and laboratory suppliers in more than 2500 booths. In addition to attending
the exposition, the conferees listened to 1250 oral presentations, viewed more than 1000 posters, checked numerous company
seminar rooms, or attended one of 114 short courses. The total attendance was around 19,500, down 10% from 2007.
Undoubtedly, Pittcon still remains the most important yearly international analytical exhibition, where companies introduce
their latest instruments, instrument accessories, software, columns, sample preparation, and other consumable products. Because
many past attendees have purchased one or more new products within three months after attending the show, most exhibitors
attempt to maximize their booth traffic to meet as many potential customers as possible.
The purpose of this report is to provide information about many of the new separation consumables and accessory products that
were displayed at Pittcon 2008. In some cases, products that were introduced during 2007 but after Pittcon 2007 (1,2) might
be included for reasons of completeness. The information is based upon manufacturers' responses to a questionnaire mailed
in December 2007. Because of space limitations and the fact that some manufacturers did not respond to the questionnaire,
this report cannot be considered an exhaustive listing of all the new products that were introduced in New Orleans. However,
over the years, these Pittcon introduction summaries have provided a good source of information that would be difficult for
one individual to gather during the four days of the exhibition. In addition, the products introduced have shown definite
correlations to current research, development, and application activity in the separation sciences.
As in previous years, columns and other products recommended by their manufacturers primarily for biomolecule separations
or sample preparation are denoted in the tables with the designation BIO. Some of these products can be used for general high
performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separations as well, but their main emphasis is for biological samples. This year
there was a marked reduction in products devoted strictly to bioapplications. In this month's coverage, I will look at gas chromatography (GC) products, sample preparation products, hardware, and accessories
and kits for chromatography and sample preparation.
Gas Chromatography
Table I: Gas chromatography columns
|
Although gas chromatography (GC) is considered to be a relatively mature separation technique, new GC columns continue to
be introduced each year at Pittcon (Table I), 11 in all for this year. All GC columns were the wall-coated open tubular (WCOT)
format with the exception of one packed column. An established company, Hamilton (Reno, Nevada), has entered a new market
with a full line of GC capillary columns and a few packed columns while Agilent (Palo Alto, California) has introduced a new
line of 0.18-mm i.d. capillary columns that provide high efficiency and high speed without requiring modification of the GC
pressure system, which is sometimes required for 0.10-mm i.d. columns.
![[Get Copyright Permissions]](http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif){kind=small}
