Routine maintenance mass analyzer

Efficient high-vacuum pumps generally do not operate well near atmospheric pressure. Thus the vacuum system must have a mechanical vacuum pump to evacuate the system to a pressure where the high-vacuum pumps are effective. Mechanical pumps require routine maintenance, such as ballasting and replacing the pump oil. The diffusion pump is the least expensive and most reliable high-vacuum pump. Turbomolecular pumps and cryopumps are also used on mass analyzers. The high-vacuum pumps also require... 

Under normal circumstances, there is no need for the operator to be concerned about routine maintenance of the mass analyzer. With modem turbomolecular pumping systems, it is highly unlikely there will be any pump- or sample-related contamination problems associated with the quadrupole, magnetic sector, or TOP mass analyzer. This certainly was not the case with some of the early instruments that used oil-based diffusion pumps, because many researchers found that the quadrupole and prefllters were contaminated by oil vapors from the pumps. Today, it is fairly common for turbomolecular-based mass analyzers to require no maintenance of the quadrupole rods over the lifetime of the instrument, other than an inspection carried out by a service engineer on an annual basis. However, in extreme cases, particularly with older instruments, removal and cleaning of the quadrupole assembly might be required to get acceptable peak resolution and abundance sensitivity performance. 

ICP mass spectrometers are complex pieces of eqnipment that, if not maintained correctly, have the potential to fail when yon least expect them to. For that reason, a major aspect of instrnment nsability is how often routine maintenance has to be carried ont, especially if complex sample matrices are being analyzed. You must not lose sight of the fact that your samples are being aspirated into the sample... 

Off-gas analysis is routinely carried out either by mass spectrometry or by gas chromatography (GC), in contrast with traditional infrared and paramagnetic off-gas analyzers which are maintenance intensive and have slow response times and significant calibration drifts. 12 ... 

Process MS is a reliable technique that can provide rapid and precise multicomponent analysis on process streams. The ability to monitor multiple sample points with a single analyzer makes MS very economical for many applications, even with the high cost of the analyzer itself Maintenance requirements on modern MS analyzers are on a par with or lower than most other analyzer technologies. In addition to permanent installations for routine process control, these attributes also make process mass spectrometry extremely useful for process development and troubleshooting. 

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