This is our venerable single quadrupole GC-MS (Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry). 

This is one of the two mass spectrometers we have, the other being the Agilent triple quadrupole LC-MS. It is a fairly standard instrument with the split/splitless injector and a 30 metre VF5-MS column. The recent acquisition of the Gerstel Multipurpose Sampler has given it an entire new lease of life, allowing us to perform sample preparation and automatic injection by headspace analysis, Solid Phase Micro Extraction (SPME) and conventional liquid injection. The instrument lives in an air-conditioned annex of my lab and is run from the PC next to it via Thermo Xcalibur v1.4 software and Gerstel’s Maestro software for the MPS.

Current applications for this instrument include a research project into the function of terpenoids in plant immune response, the analysis of sugars in a wide variety of samples by acetylation for GC, profiling of volatile compounds in seaweed and metabolite profiling by methyl chloroformate derivatisation, by the method of Smart et al (1). 

(1) Smart, K. F.; Aggio, R. M. B.; VanHoutte, J. R. and Villas-Bôas, S.G. 2010. Analytical platform for metabolome analysis of microbial cells using methyl chloroformate derivatization followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Nature Protocols 5: 1709 – 1729. doi:10.1038/nprot.2010.108