SepSolve Analytical scientific poster wins award

SepSolve Analytical Ltd’s scientific poster, ‘Non-target screening of liquid smoke flavourings by GCxGC‒TOF MS’, has won the award for best industrial R&D poster at the 2022 Multidimensional Chromatography (MDC) Workshop.

The MDC Workshop is an annual event that brings together the world’s experts in MDC to share and discuss their research. It was created, and is still organised, by Prof. Eric Reiner at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) in Toronto.

SepSolve Analytical’s poster was presented at the Workshop by Dr Laura McGregor, Product Marketing Manager.

Laura commented: “In the poster, we showed how GCxGC–TOF MS, coupled with SepSolve’s recently-launched ChromCompare+™ chemometrics software, provides fast, non-target screening of liquid smoke products.

“This is currently a ‘hot topic’ for analysts within the food industry because new guidelines from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) call for full chemical characterisation of liquid smoke products prior to authorisation, which means that non-target analysis is required.

“Liquid smoke is used to give food a smoky flavour – it’s created by pyrolysis of wood or other plant materials, resulting in a complex mixture of phenolics, carbonyls and aromatics, so it’s understandable that government agencies such as the EFSA are insisting on full chemical characterisation.

“However, non-target analysis is a challenge for many laboratories due to the time needed to align and compare chromatographic data from unknown samples to identify them. The method we demonstrated in the poster overcomes this issue through the combined use of SepSolve’s BenchTOF2™ [mass spectrometer] and ChromCompare+ chemometrics software.While the BenchTOF2 provides improved mass accuracy and streamlined analytical workflows, ChromCompare+ identifies unknown compounds via untargeted data analysis of all the raw data.

“The resulting analytics are available in minutes rather than days, which enables food manufacturers to comfortably adhere to the new EFSA guidelines, as well as improve their quality control procedures and accelerate the development of new flavourings.”

The poster award was sponsored by Certech, a research and development and technological service provider for companies involved in activities related to chemistry, from pharmaceutical through to construction.

Accepting the award, Laura said: “The credit really goes to Helena Leask, one of our Applications Specialists, who developed the methodology and analysed the liquid smoke flavourings – the results of which were presented in this poster.”

Please complete the form below to download the poster: Non-target screening of liquid smoke flavourings by GCxGC‒TOF MS