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The GERSTEL Headspace ChemSensor can rapidly distinguish among similar products with volatile constituents. The instrument consists of a special headspace autosampler coupled directly to a special mass selective detector. Unlike headspace gas chromatography with mass selective detection (HS/GC/MS), this system has no GC in this basic version, and there is virtually no separation of the volatile constituents. Instead, the headspace volatiles are transferred directly to the mass selective detector, which typically gives rise to a single broad peak composed of all the volatile constituents in the samples. Because the mass spectra of all these compounds are also overlaid, multivariate analysis and pattern recognition software are used to classify the samples. The advantages of this system over conventional HS/GC or HS/GC/MS are its speed and ease of use. Samples can be analyzed every 2 to 4 minutes, depending upon the amount of headspace equilibration time required, and operator training takes less than an hour.
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