All things being equal with respect to hardware, column, sample etc., would GC data collected via Open Lab, Chemstation and Mass Hunter all yield the same peak areas?

Hello,

To cut to the chase: No, peak areas calculated in MassHunter will not be equal to the peak areas calculated in GC/OpenLAB ChemStation software.

GC ChemStation and OpenLAB ChemStation use response units of pA for FID data whereas the response axis for GC-FID data collected in MassHunter or MSD ChemStation is unit-less. Since the software products are not using the same response units then the peak area calculated by these products will be significantly different, even if they are integrating the same chromatographic data.

Hello,

To cut to the chase: No, peak areas calculated in MassHunter will not be equal to the peak areas calculated in GC/OpenLAB ChemStation software.

GC ChemStation and OpenLAB ChemStation use response units of pA for FID data whereas the response axis for GC-FID data collected in MassHunter or MSD ChemStation is unit-less. Since the software products are not using the same response units then the peak area calculated by these products will be significantly different, even if they are integrating the same chromatographic data.

Thanks for the information. So its it fair to say that the pA units displayed on the y-axis of the I/OQ report plots are “derived”?

Regards,

Dan

I cannot say for certain about the pA units on the I/OQ report. Agilent OQ reports are generated in the Agilent Compliance Engine and I am not familiar with that software.

Generally speaking, when comparing data acquired/analyzed in multiple different software products you want to compare the calculated amount/concentration results as opposed to the peak integration results. As long as the quantification method is properly calibrated and the peak integration is reproducible then similar results should be calculated by the different software products.