1CPAC: May 11, 2006
NeSSIfying GC
a proposal to the Washington Technology Center
Brian Rohrback, Infometrix, Inc.
CPAC TeamDavid Veltkamp, Brian Marquardt, Mel Koch and
Jaromir Ruzicka
2CPAC: May 11, 2006
Life in the Petroleum Industry
US Oil sector shed more than 500,000 jobs between 1982 and 2005
American Petroleum Institute surveyed and found a projected need for 30,000 engineers over the next 5 years
Total current enrollment in petroleum-related engineering programs in US universities stands at 1,500
http://www.ptsstaffing.com/ptsnews_05q3.pdf
3CPAC: May 11, 2006
Whither Process GC?
• Process GCs generate a lot of data; very little of the information content of that data is mined from the existing installations
• Automation has to reduce maintenance demands of the on-line instruments
• There is a strong need to standardize and simplify the calibration of a collection of process GCs (worldwide?)
• There are powerful financial and quality incentives to bring more complex GC analysis on-line
4CPAC: May 11, 2006
WTC ProposalSoftware and Algorithm Tasks
• Retention time alignment– Test additional algorithms for speed and computer
horsepower requirements
– Evaluate accuracy precision of shift and quantitation
• Evaluate EZChrom• Use chemometrics tools to develop a reliable means of
making hardware corrections automatically• GC data compression
5CPAC: May 11, 2006
WTC ProposalPrototyping a NeSSI GC
• Design and construction of fluidics– Build a test platform to handle stream switching, blending
and sample injection
• NeSSI GC interface– Integrate the ASI MicroFast GC
– Assess feasibility of commercial microfabricated GCs
• Sensor addition/data fusion– Use of vaporchromic sensors, temperature, pressure, …
– Differentiate instrument malfunction from process upsets
6CPAC: May 11, 2006
WTC ProposalApplications
• Evaluate three hydrocarbon analysis applications– Extract organics from a wastewater stream and ID source
– Test pollutants in air to schedule maintenance
– Characterize input naphtha to optimize a catalytic cracker
• Expand the application base– Draw from food, pharmaceutical, biotech
– Evaluate the commonality of function
7CPAC: May 11, 2006
3 instruments: C8 to C19 hydrocarbons
Raw data
20 40 60Time (seconds)
Instrument to instrument consistency
8CPAC: May 11, 2006
3 instruments: C8 to C19 hydrocarbons
Auto-Aligned
20 40 60Time (seconds)
Instrument to instrument consistency
9CPAC: May 11, 2006
PCA scores before and after alignment
Alignment gives us:
A means of eliminating the run-to-run variability that affects all forms of chromatography.
Requires no internal standards and no use (in the traditional sense) of external standards, both of which are impractical.
10CPAC: May 11, 2006
Process GC data processing in action
11CPAC: May 11, 2006
Process Gas Chromatographs
• Reviewed 12 systems that can be used in process analysis – ABB, Emerson, Foxboro,
Siemens, Yokogawa
– Agilent, PerkinElmer, Shimadzu, Thermo, Varian
– ASI, SLS Micro
• Selected 3 as the focus of the current development effort, driven by CPAC interest, cost to develop, and time to market
12CPAC: May 11, 2006
Summary
• To use chromatography in a process setting, we need to process the data automatically.
• Retention time drift is a constant companion but can be corrected by software in a fully automated way.
• The result of alignment is better run-to-run peak identification and can unify data from more than one chromatograph.
• With aligned data, interpretation is both more sensitive and more reliable, allowing unattended assessment of samples, the instrument and the process as a whole.