Looking to use alternative carrier gas from Helium

Hi,

I am putting together a proposal for the owner of the company I work for to make flavors. I cannot purchase the GC/MS system until I can determine if I can use an alternative carrier gas with good resolution,selectivity, etc. We are looking at buying 7890A GC with a 5975C msd as a detector. In the past at another company I used same equipment with helium as a carrier gas and built a mass spec library including retention times, etc. Using the column - DB-5ms 40m x 0.18mm x 0.18um. Now that Helium is difficult to get, when we buy this equipment from Agilent I want to start off using a carrier gas that is in constant supply. I understand I will have to update retention times for thousands of peaks so I need to know what you guys think I should use as a carrier gas other than helium. Should I not use Nitrogen? I remember reading in the Agilent class books from classes I took a few years ago that nitrogen will give some overlapping peaks at some point in the column depending on phase.Is it still not a good alternative to helium now that we may not be able to get helium at times. Is hydrogen ok to use with mass spec using a hydrogen generator? Could I use a combination of two gases?

 

Also, is there a newer method translation software so I could translate the old method and column to using a new type of column and carrier gas that may keep retention times somewhat close to original method. If I have to start over on the retention times then that is fine.

Thank you,

Dan Lingo

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