British American Tobacco Group R&D Acquires Novel Mass Spectrometry Technology

British American Tobacco Group R&D has become the first laboratory in the UK to benefit from Folded Flight Path (FFP®) Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry equipment pioneered by Leco Corporation, St Joseph, MI. This instrument employs a multi-reflecting flight path through a chamber of only 70cm to create flight paths of up to 40m and yield a mass resolving power of up to 50,000. Whilst remarkable in its own right, this very high resolving power is achieved at a mass accuracy of <1ppm across the full mass range with data acquisition speeds of up to 200sps.

The Pegasus GC-HRT (High Resolution TOFMS) is in operation at the Group R&D laboratories in Southampton to support BAT’s research into understanding the chemical complexity of tobacco smoke. It is the latest addition to BAT’s expanding analytical capability and complements collaborative research at the University of Liège, where a group led by Professor Jef Focant is using another novel Leco instrument, the Pegasus 4D GCxGC-TOFMS, for similar purposes.

The additional chromatographic dimension and True Signal Deconvolution of the Pegasus 4D allows high chromatographic and spectral separation and thus the identification of large numbers of substances in smoke samples. Both instruments utilise Leco’s integral ChromaTOF® software which is the only software platform used for sample acquisition, data processing and reporting.

Dr Chris Wright, Head of Analytical Science, said: “Our strategic purchase of the new Leco instruments keeps us at the forefront of technology in this challenging field of research. We are very pleased with their performance and the new capabilities that they provide.”