Purchase of Off-gas Mass Spectrometer

DTU intends to purchase a Prima BT Laboratory Bench-Top Gas Analysis Mass Spectrometer with CultiValve 1232R, a gas analysis magnetic sector mass spectrometer (MS) to enable the measurement of inlet-gas and off-gas in a larger number of small-scale bioreactors. We would like to enable the simultaneous measurement of both gases from 16 reactors, requiring equipment with a 32 channel autosampler. Moreover, the autosampler and mass spectrometer would need to be capable of handling low flows of gases coming out of the small-scale bioreactor (10mL/min). The instrument should be a magnetic sector mass spectrometer with a high uptime, capable of running for around a month without requiring further calibrations. To our knowledge, CultiXcell A/S is the only supplier on the market selling an instrument that fulfills the following requirements: o Be a bench-top instrument with a small footprint for a regular molecular biology laboratory o High up time, providing stable and reliable measurements for a minimum of 1-month continuous operation. During this time, the maximum measured relative concentration drift for the inert gases N2 and Ar in air must be less than two percent, without requiring recalibration or mass alignment. o The stability must be better than ±0.001% absolute on a 0.93% Ar concentration over 7 days. o It must be possible to analyze the flow of gas down to 10 ml/min. The system must allow for the gas-streams of bioreactors to be individually analyzed downstream of the system. o The system should enable simultaneous analysis of at least 5 different compounds, for example in addition to N2, Ar, CO2 and O2, the monitoring of ethanol, isoprene and acetone should be possible. o The system must be capable of measuring concentration of H2O in the gas.