Fisher Regulator Ensures Low-Noise Gas Delivery

Emerson has added the Fisher EZHSO Regulator and Whisper Trim Cage options to the EZH and EZHSO Series. The EZHSO design incorporates a spring cartridge that offers a fail-to-open alternative, ensuring gas delivery and maximising uptime. The Whisper Trim technology provides efficient noise prevention at the source, while the cage can be easily retrofitted in the field.

The Type EZHSO and EZHSO-OSX (slam-shut) regulators are available in 1, 2 and 3in sizes and provide the same benefits as Emerson's Fisher Type EZH regulators. This includes a 103bar (1500psig) inlet/outlet rating to meet higher system requirements and an environmentally friendly, no-bleed design that eliminates emissions for higher-pressure pipelines.

Top-entry maintenance reduces the time and expenses required for training, installation and maintenance, and the bubble-tight shutoff reduces cost of ownership by precisely regulating high-pressure transmission lines, providing consistent reliability of gas delivery and shutoff. The Whisper Trim cage option is available for 2, 3, and 4in sizes, opening a broader application range for this series.

It can achieve noise reduction of 10 - 20dB(A) depending on the application. As a source treatment, the Whisper Trim technology uses multiple orifices of special size, shape, and spacing, which reduces noise-producing interactions and offers a better alternative than path treatment or buried service. Units already installed can be easily retro-fitted with a Whisper Trim cage.

Thermo Fisher Releases Mass Frontier 6.0 Package

Thermo Fisher Scientific has launched Mass Frontier 6.0: a software package offering sophisticated features for the management, evaluation and interpretation of mass spectra. The software is applicable to small-molecule structural elucidation in a range of applications, including metabolite identification and impurity analysis in drug-discovery and toxicology studies.

Providing comprehensive spectral data and fragmentation mechanism knowledge management, this new version of Mass Frontier facilitates structural elucidation by simplifying the interpretation of MSn spectral data. The software will be showcased at the Thermo Scientific hospitality suite at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown in Salons G-K during ASMS, which runs from 31 May to 4 June in Philadelphia. Mass Frontier 6.0 includes several software tools for processing and organising mass spectral and chromatographic data.

Providing a platform to determine structure, properties and class membership of small molecules, the software offers users fast access to useful information, providing them with the data they need to make decisions. A capability of Mass Frontier is its copyrighted Fragmentation Library, which contains fragmentation mechanisms for small molecules. These mechanisms have been collated from all available printed media dedicated to mass spectrometry.

Each mechanism, along with the chemical structures, is manually and automatically verified and saved in the library, along with complementary information such as the title, authors and the source. The library collection, together with 24 general ionisation, fragmentation and rearrangement rules, serves as a knowledge base for the prediction of fragmentation pathways from user-provided structures. With Mass Frontier 6.0, the Fragmentation Library now covers almost all published literature, allowing users to quickly search thousands of entries, eliminating the time lost to a manual literature search.

The library, along with Mass Frontier's predictive fragmentation tool and automatic spectral annotation, is intended to simplify the structural elucidation of mass spectral data. In addition to the literature-based Fragmentation Library, Mass Frontier 6.0 also allows users to create their own library of customised fragmentation mechanisms and is able to learn these mechanisms and apply them to predict fragments. The new version also offers SQL client-server capabilities for dynamic library searching and storage, which is intended to increase productivity by allowing multiple users to share access to the libraries and to manage knowledge more effectively.

Additionally, Mass Frontier provides expert-annotated spectral libraries in both positive and negative ionisation modes from common pharmaceutical compounds and human metabolites. These libraries establish an empirical knowledge database applicable to pharmacology and toxicology studies. The software features intelligent knowledge management systems with a flexible database structure, allowing heterogeneous data (spectrum, spectral tree, structure, fragmentation mechanism and experimental conditions) to be stored, transferred and queried in and between libraries.

MSn spectral trees acquired from Thermo Scientific ion trap products can be automatically deconvoluted in Mass Frontier, which assists in data comparison. The Fragment Ion Search (FISh) function provides fast screening for structurally similar compounds through filtering a list of fragments acquired either by theoretical fragment prediction or by experimental MSn spectral trees.

The product complements Thermo Scientific Metworks metabolite identification software for the study of biotransformations and Sieve differential analysis software for the study of metabolomics. The new version of the software is also fully compatible with high-resolution accurate-mass data from the Thermo Scientific LTQ Orbitrap family of products. The software streamlines data processing and boosts confidence in analytical results, according to the company. Fragmentation Library and Mass Frontier are trademarks of Highchem.

Japan's NPA Selects Thermo Fisher Spectrometers

Japan's National Police Agency (NPA) has purchased 51 Thermo Scientific LXQ linear ion trap mass spectrometers and 27 Thermo Scientific Nicolet 6700 FT-IR spectrometers with Continuum microscopes. The NPA will use the LXQ LC/MS/MS system for toxicology screening in each of its 47 prefecture offices and will use the Nicolet 6700 FT-IR system for forensics in nearly half of those offices.

Prior to purchasing the LXQ system, the NPA used single quadruple LCMS for analysing drugs and toxic substances. The LXQ's ion trap technology provides high sensitivity and specificity, which enables it to analyse hundreds of analytes in blood and urine samples. The NPA said that one of the reasons it chose the LXQ was the time and labour it saved with the total solution offered by Thermo Fisher Scientific, including the company's ToxID software.

The software performs automatic data analysis and reporting, eliminating the need for manual data interpretation and increasing confidence in compound identification. The NPA saw a similar opportunity to improve both the quality of its forensic analysis, as well as to optimise cost per analysis and lab productivity with the Nicolet 6700 FT-IR spectrometer and Continuum microscope. This system combines visual microscopic analysis with infrared chemical information, ensuring sensitive, accurate interpretation, while preserving the sample.

For instance, one reason the NPA cited for purchasing the Nicolet 6700 FT-IR was its ability to analyse paint chips, a key piece of identification evidence in a hit-and-run crime. Normally, identifying auto paint requires dissolution and chemical extraction, but FT-IR microscopy provides quick chemical identification of each paint layer without degrading the sample.