In the flavours and fragrance industries it is often useful for an operator to be able to smell individual components of a sample as they elute. The nose of a trained analyst can be far more discriminating than any GC detector to the nuances in flavours and fragrances allowing for better compound identification. Ellutia has produced a customised 200 series GC for an essential oil producer to help with their analysis. The system splits the effluent from the analysis column between a special heated and humidified transfer line (the "sniffer port") and an FID detector. The sniffer port allows the user to smell the components as they elute, whilst the FID allows them to visually monitor individual peak
elution on the integrator screen, giving the optimum time to use the sniffer port.
For further information on specially engineered chromatography systems please visit http://www.ellutia.com/sniffer.html