Hello again from axion labs. I’m here today to answer a question that comes up a lot and that is how much does the GC cost (gas chromatograph).
There are a lot of GC’s in the world. There are a lot of different prices.
It would be sort of like asking how much does a car cost. Well, a used pinto might be a thousand dollars and a high-end ferrari might be a million dollars.
New GC
A brand new GC is gonna run you about thirty to fifty thousand dollars. Now that is for a modern, state-of-the-art GC. You know for fifty thousand you’re gonna get all the bells and whistles. You’re gonna get the autosampler and the data system but this does not include a mass spec. By the way, for a GC-MS we’re talking more like a hundred thousand dollars and up from there. But GC’s like I said thirty to fifty thousand.
Refurbished GC
If you’re looking for a bargain, call up your sales person and ask them to give you a quote on a refurbished piece of equipment. Now the sales people hate when I tell you this but all the major players out there, Agilent, Shimadzu, Thermo, all sell refurbished equipment of their own and they sell it with a warranty. So not to give away too many of my best secrets but not long ago I bought a used, refurbished, piece of GC equipment, Agilent 7890. It was the current model at the time and we got it for about thirteen or fourteen thousand. That is just the instrument without the data system but that gives you an idea. If you’re looking for a bargain, get quotes on refurbished equipment.
GC’s are very durable
GC’s are very durable. I have a GC in my lab that was made in the early 90’s, I believe in 1991 and it still works great. So these are pretty durable devices. There’s not a lot of moving parts so if you buy a good quality instrument even if it’s used or refurbished, you should get quite a few years out of it.
That’s the cost of a GC in a nutshell.