National Wine and Grape Industry Centre
First GCOMS Installed at the NWGIC
Picture 1: Leigh Schmidke using the Auto Sampler on the Gas Chromatograph (GC)
Picture 2: Mass Spectrometer (MS)
One of our Centre Staff, Mr Leigh Schmidtke, started to use the new Gas Chromatograph Olfactometry Mass Spectrometer (GCOMS) which was installed on 20 and 21 August at the NWGIC.
The new systems allows Leigh and his colleagues in the wine chemistry group to measure aroma compounds present in wine. Added to the GCMS was an olfactometry port supplied by DATU a company started by Prof Terry Acree of Cornell University who is a pioneer in the development of GCO systems. The olfactometry allows the detection of odour-active compounds separated by the gas chromatograph by a person smelling the individual compounds as they elute from the GC.
The olfactometry port will allow split analysis with the GCMS so that in one analysis run individual compounds can be smelled as well as analysed by the MS for chemical identification and quantification.