FlavourSpec®25: Sensitive Analyser for Food, Flavour and Beverage testing

The FlavourSpec®25 comprises advantages of a Gas Chromatograph (GC) with regard to selectivity and the outstanding sensitivity of an Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS) enabling the reliable analysis of volatiles in the headspace of liquids and solid samples without any sample pre-treatment.

In its latest generation G.A.S. respected various QC related requirements same as operators‘ preferences to equip the device with a PC steered ’PAL Control‘ software that allows to set and track sampling methods, control the sampling itself and integrate its parameters into the measurement files (MEA). Methods edited by the user are transferred to the auto-sampler and the job is tracked. 

The ‘SequenceDesigner‘ program creates measurement sequences and monitors/controls the FlavourSpec®25, while individual programs configured on the PC run program can still be created directly on the device itself, as before.

The latest firmware 4,6 allows  to run the FlavourSpec®25  in elevated temperature ranges of 40-100°C) on GC and IMS and up to 200°C on the injector while a ’Cleaning‘ can be run at to >120°C for baking out. This allows to test for semi-volatiles (as lactones, sesquiterpenes, esters etc.). An integrated injection counter reminds the operator of regular changes of septa.

For improved  separation the instrument uses a firmware steered ramping by its integrated Electronic Pneumatic Controller. 

The FlavourSpec®25 provides an automatic data acquisition on the device and when connected to a PC. 3-D data visualization and analysis using its comprehensive in-house software development ’VOCal‘ are facilitated.  Besides the possibility of quantifying single marker compounds various  software plug-ins allow to easily detect the appearance of new compounds or the differences in concentrations to a reference  to further analyse and match peak patterns with sensory wise defined flavours. The result classifies differences  to quickly characterize e.g. the quality of a sample. This concept follows the approach of the so-called ‘electronic nose‘, but uses a  reliable physical separation/detection of the volatile compounds by GC plus IMS instead.  

VOCal comes with an implemented and editable  GCxIMS library  based on the NIST 2020 retention (Kovats) indices which consists of more than 80,000 entries  which is  completed by  IMS drift times to achieve maximum detectability  for unknown compounds.

All these characteristics together make the FlavourSpec a unique and innovative trend setting analytical tool with proven applications in several analytical fields. (e.g. control of raw material quality and storage conditions, flavour stability and off-flavour detection, process control, product quality test, authentication etc).