1/21

There were a few goals we had in mind to get accomplished for today:
1. make a new internal standard mix in hexane
2. run the internal standard on the GCMS, print to chromatogram, identify the peaks, calculate the peak area, and then calculate the response factor
3. run a blank hexane to clean the machine
4. make a fresh saliva sample and run it on the GCMS
5. clean the machine again with a sample of hexane

A new standard was created and ran under a few different methods on the GCMS.  We are still struggling to find the best way to get a good separation of peaks.  Eventually, we ran our first saliva sample on the GCMS.  The peaks did not turn out very well.

Time is running out this interim semester, so we set up a sequence to run overnight with four different methods.  Each method varied in different elements such as solvent delay and the speed it ramps up the temperature.  We set up three runs of the standard for each method followed by a hexane run, then a run on the saliva, then a final hexane run to clean the machine.

Hopefully tomorrow we will see that one of these methods produces really good results and we will be able to run a lot of saliva samples tomorrow with it, finally collecting the data we need to get some results.