1	A Practical Guide to Drug Identification Using Fast GC/MS Danny Kirkpatrick, B.S. Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, Tuscaloosa Laboratory
2	"Co-Authors" Co-Authors Rachelle Shelton, M.F.S. Derek Headley, B.S. Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, Birmingham Laboratory
3	"Helium has long been the..." Helium has long been the preferred carrier gas for GC/MS applications With the recent developments that suggest that the helium supply may become reduced, hydrogen gas is an excellent, viable and economic alternative. The use of hydrogen as a carrier gas can improve sample throughput in dramatically reduced analysis time
4	Van Deemter Curve Figure 1: Van Deemter curve: Agilent Technologies
5	Cost Tank of H₂ gas (UHP 300 pounds) $160 Leak detector (for He and H₂) $700 H₂ gas regulator $380 Insert pillow for oven $475
6	Safety Safety precautions are very manageable Utilization of proper precautions along with innovative engineering of today’s GC/MS instruments makes the use of hydrogen easily accomplished
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12	Method Development The availability of new and free software downloads have taken much of the ‘trial and error’ out of developing methods for GC/MS Current method parameters are simply entered into a table format and the corresponding parameters are calculated and displayed
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30	Resources GC Capillary Column Method Translation Software (Version 2.0.a.c) http://www.chem.agilent.com/cag/servsup/usersoft/main.html Agilent 5975 Mass Selective Detector Hydrogen Safety Manual