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Phone: 925-609-1150
E-Mail: info@diabloanalytical.com

Diablo Analytical, Inc.

Diablo Analytical News

Volume 1, Number 1, Summer 1995

What's Inside...

Diablo Analytical's New Facility
A Brief History of Diablo Analytical
The GC-Atomic Emission Detector and Compound-Independent Calibration
Analytical Resources on the Internet -- The GC-AED E-Mail Discussion List
Recent Diablo Application Highlights
Diablo Analytical - What's in a name?

The Diablo Analytical News

This is the first edition of a newsletter that will be published twice a year. The information, articles and stories are designed to help our clients. We highlight new analytical applications for industry, special new products, and new analytical services at Diablo Analytical, Inc.

Diablo Analytical’s New Facility

Recently, Diablo Analytical, Inc. expanded into a new 2000 square-foot facility in Concord, CA. This facility allows us to work more efficiently to solve customer problems. The facility includes a larger system integration and development lab. The new facility also includes support equipment, computers, a local area network, E-mail access, offices, and information resources. We also have a variety of software development tools for system integration projects and custom data acquisition and analysis applications.

[Figure 1]
Diablo Analytical Principals Scott Hein and Terry Ramus, in front of their new Concord California development lab and office facility.

The facility is located in Concord, CA, which is central to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento. The area has excellent airport access for travel to other customer sites.

A Brief History of Diablo Analytical

Diablo Analytical, Inc. was formed by two analytical chemists to provide solutions for industry. Diablo combines traditional academic training and industrial experience in a new approach for business. Only a few years ago, expert professionals were trained in academia for a career in industrial R&D. Each company would fund their own technical groups to address the company’s priorities. Recently, many companies have adopted a strategy with less overhead, and these technology groups now have fewer resources. Simultaneously, advances in analytical technology and automation have helped fuel the emphasis on productivity and the need for analytical solutions that work out of the box.

Diablo Analytical, Inc. has adapted the traditional technology group into an organization that can system integrate and implement working solutions for industry. These skills are available to industry on a project basis or under a support agreement. Timelines keep projects on-track, and the correct skills result in high quality solutions. Project teams work closely with the customer, internal company experts, and vendors to provide high impact solutions.

Analytical Application Focus

Diablo provides GC-AED Application Support

The atomic emission detector for gas chromatography (GC-AED) is manufactured by Hewlett-Packard and used in a wide range of industries. The instrument is designed to be very flexible, but it also requires significant configuration for specific applications. Diablo and Hewlett-Packard have agreed to provide additional application support for GC-AED customers through Diablo Analytical, Inc.

Implementation of GC-AED Solutions

We provide these AED application support services nationwide from our facility in Concord, CA. We will perform initial work on your project in our facility, and we will finish the project at your facility. We implement new AED methods, optimize existing AED methods, or enhance AED operability with custom macro programs. Diablo Analytical, Inc. works closely with the experts at Hewlett-Packard through our partnership agreement to provide users with customized AED solutions.

Unique GC-AED Capability Use Fewer Standards with CIC

Compound Independent Calibration (CIC) allows quantitative GC-AED analyses based on simple calibrations. A one component standard can be used to calibrate the GC-AED quickly for many analytes. Multi-component standards that include each analyte of interest are not required for CIC techniques. CIC must be used wisely, but it can be a big time-saver. CIC also provides rapid quantitative information for industrial analytical problem-solving.

The key to CIC is that all analytes and standards are converted into the same species before measurement. The GC-AED degrades analytes molecules into a few common elements that are measured by emission spectroscopy. Certain other instruments can also perform CIC, but instrument reliability and versatility are very limited in comparison to the GC-AED. CIC applications are extensive for complex mixture analysis, problem-solving, screening applications, and process analysis.

CIC procedures involve two major steps. First, an appropriate standard is used to calibrate the GC-AED for the elements of interest. The standard must be available, reliable, stable, and compatible with the GC-AED. However, this CIC standard can now be used for many different analytes. Method development should include all the accepted validation procedures for chromatographic analysis, and the technique should be consistent with the problem.

ChemStation macros are essential for efficient CIC implementation since manual data processing can be very time consuming. However, the instrument can be configured for CIC to yield a productive tool. For aditional reading , several key scientific articles discuss CIC applications: Schafer, Absolute gas chromatographic measurements with an atomic emission spectrometer as a detector, HRC, 1993, 16, 674. Kovacic and Ramus, Application of a MIP-AED for quantification of halogenated compounds by gas chromatography, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 1992, 7, 999. Sullivan and Quimby, Detection of C, H, N and O in capillary gas chromatography by atomic emission, HRC, 1989, 12, 282.

Solutions - more that just a Product or a Service

A product often arrives on your door step in a box. If you have problems with that product, you might be able to call a service for some help. However, today’s analytical consumer is asking for "solutions" that work in their environment right out of the box. Solutions often include combinations of several products and services that are brought together by a "System Integrator". Successful solutions today are more complete, require less training, are robust, and include intelligent algorithms to warn the user of serious problems. These performance demands mean that successful solutions must be designed specifically for each application.

The three major steps toward a working solution are problem definition, system integration and implementation. A successful project team must understand the problem, the instruments, the technologies, and the operating environment in order to implement a solution successfully. The team must apply skills in communication, problem-solving, analytical development, chemistry, computer programming, training, sampling, data-handling, and networking. The end result of this effort is analytical technology that is immediately productive for the customer.

Analytical Resources on the Internet

The Internet has received a great deal of both positive and negative press during the past few years, the latter because many people tried to get connected and were frustrated by the process. In addition, once you are connected you quickly discover that it can be difficult finding useful information - particularly related to Analytical Chemistry. In his recent book Silicon Snake Oil, Cliff Stoll states,

"One of the great joys of computers is how they’re great at wasting time that might otherwise be difficult to waste"

. It is very easy to spend (waste?) a great deal of time trying to find the useful “information” that seems to be hidden cleverly among huge amounts of trivia on the Internet. The purpose of this article is to provide you with some shortcuts to finding useful information. Hopefully these starting points will save you some of your precious time. WeI have included information primarily on World Wide Web (WWW) and gopher resources since they are among the easiest information services to use. The catalogs listed below contain numerous references to other valuable information resources such as E-Mail Discussion Groups.

Catalogs of Internet Information Resources

A good place to start is a World-Wide Web page called "Some Chemistry Resources on the Internet" maintained by Garry Wiggin’s at Indiana University:
(http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem/cheminfo/chemres.html)
Another WWW catalog that contains chemistry information is the "Yahoo" index at http://www.yahoo.com/ look under "Science" for Chemistry.

Professional Societies

American Chemical Society

gopher: acsinfo.acs.org
WWW: http://www.acs.org

Society for Applied Spectroscopy

WWW: http://esther.la.asu.edu/sas
Includes titles and abstracts for both past and upcoming issues of Applied Spectroscopy

Governmental Agencies

Research Institutions

Center for Proc. Analytical Chemistry

WWW: http://www.cpac.washington.edu

UseNet NewsGroups

Analytical Chem: sci.chem.analytical
General Chemistry: sci.chem
Spectroscopy: sci.techniques.spectrosc
Optics: sci.optics

Additional References

Several Chemistry-related journals have had recent articles on the Internet

“Analyzing on The Internet”, Analytical Chemistry, 1995, 67(7), 255A-259A.
“Spectroscopy Hypermedia on the Internet”, Spectroscopy, 1995, 10(4), 19-21.
“Surfing the World on the Web”, Todays Chemist at Work, 1995, April, 67-70.

General Books on the Internet

Not surprisingly, the explosion of interest in the Internet has resulted in an explosion of books being published on the subject. We have found the following “classics” to be useful in understanding the fundamentals of the Internet.

“The Whole Internet User’s Guide and Catalog”, Ed Krol, O’Reilly & Associates.
“Connecting to the Internet”, Susan Estrada, O’Reilly and Associates.

Announcing: GC-AED Internet E-Mail Discussion List

In order to facilitate the exchange of information between users of the Hewlett-Packard GC-AED, Diablo Analytical has set up a free Internet E-Mail discussion list dedicated to the AED. E-Mail discussion lists provide you with fast access to a large number of people with experience and or interest in a focused topic like the AED. Discussion lists are one of the easiest Internet information services to use.

How to Subscribe

Send an Internet E-mail message to aedlist@diab.com with a subject of SUBSCRIBE (all caps):

To:		aedlist@diab.com
Subject:	SUBSCRIBE

Contributing to the List

You can contribute to the AED list by sending an e-mail message to aedlist@diab.com. Your message will automatically be forwarded back out to all other members of the list:

To:		aedlist@diab.com
Subject:	Some AED topic

How to Unsubscribe

If you decide that you would like to remove your name from the discussion list, simply send an e-mail message to aedlist@diab.com with a subject of DESUBSCRIBE (all caps):

To:		aedlist@diab.com
Subject:	DESUBSCRIBE

Recent Diablo Application Highlights

Hydrocarbon Identification macros for EnviroQuant

Diablo developed enhancements to Agilent’s EnviroQuant software to meet CLP reporting requirements for our customer. The enhanced macros allow EnviroQuant to report automatically the top 30 tentatively identified compounds excluding any hydrocarbons. This “solution” has saved the customer hours of manual processing.

Sulfur in gasoline validation

Diablo performed a validation of sulfur in gasoline measurements for on-line and laboratory X-Ray Fluorescence analyzers. Sampling studies, analyzer calibration, and performance control charting were included in the validation study. The new validation allows reliable process control of gasoline blending by our customer in compliance with new California regulatory limits.

Multi-element simulated distillation by GC-AED

Diablo has developed file-handling, and data-analysis macros for the GC-AED PASCAL ChemStation. These macros eliminate hours of manual data analysis and provide summary information that can be used to evaluate GC-AED performance. These tools enhance our customer’s productivity on the current GC-AED system.

Raw Material or Product Confirmation by FTIR

Diablo has developed custom Visual Basic applications for raw material and product screening using the Nicolet Omnic FTIR data system. The system provides quality assurance through statistical analysis and control charting. The automated system allows our customer to more reliably perform the quality assurance function with reduced training.

Diablo Analytical - What’s in a Name?

For those of you who live outside of Northern California, our company is named after Mt. Diablo, a prominent San Francisco Bay Area peak that is located near our Concord facility. Mt. Diablo is the highest peak in the Northern California coast range, and is second only to Mt. Kilimanjaro in terms of land area viewable from the summit. On a clear spring day, it is possible to see the Farallon Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the West, Mt. Shasta to the North, and the Sierra Nevada to the East. Mt. Diablo State Park provides excellent recreation opportunities for people living in the Bay Area. Our company logo depicts Mt. Diablo’s twin peaks.

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