Read a detailed account of our experience with 500-MS

On the picture below you see our HPLC equipment with a new ion trap in the middle. It is a brand new model 500-MS from Varian, the second machine of this kind installed world-wide. On the far right end you see a triple quadrupole with ESI source attached (model 1200 from Varian). An HPLC systems with a diode array detector and a cooled autosampler capable of handling microtiter plates sits between the MS detectors. On the left side you see a second HPLC system with a simple carousel-based autosampler.

 
This picture shows vacuum and gas supplies on the left, a cross section of the wall - actually a doorframe - in the middle and the back of the HPLC system on the right. The picture is a composite of three photos, but the reality looks very similar. We separated vacuum, nitrogen and air supplies from the laboratory by a wall to reduce the noise they generate.

Our mass spectrometers need the following supplies:
- Nitrogen generator for ESI and APCI ion sources of both mass spectrometers
- Air compressor for the nitrogen generator and APCI
- Four vacuum pumps generating basic-level vacuum for turbomolecular pumps
   (one in the triple quadrupole, two in the ion trap)
- Argon as collision gas for triple quadrupole
- Helium as collision gas for ion trap

Front view of the ion trap (left) and triple quadrupole (right) with an HPLC system in the middle:

 
 

Molecular Phytopathology and Mycotoxin Research Institute of Plant Pathology and Plant Protection Grisebachstrasse 6, 37077 Goettingen, Germany FAX: +49 551 3912919