Tip #231 | Empower User Question: Setting a minimum area for a group peak in Empower

Welcome back to Get Empowered! In the last Empower tip-of-the-week blog for Empower Chromatography Data System, we revisited working with QDa data in Empower (Tip #230).

In this week’s tip, we will answer an Empower user question.

Q: How do I set a minimum area for my group peak? 

Great question. The Minimum Area and Minimum Height in the Processing Method apply to individual peaks.  There is a way to do this for group peaks.

Let’s get started.

Step 1

Create a Group Peak, in this example, it is a ‘Named Group’ (figure 1).

Figure 1

Step 2

Create a Peak Custom Field, Data Type Real. In this first example:

• If the area of the group peak is greater than the value entered, it reports the area for that group peak.
• If the area of the group peak is less than the value, it returns a 0.

(Alternatively, you could use CCompRef1 in the Custom Field rather than entering the value. NOTE: CCompRef1 is in the Components tab of the Processing Method.) (figure 2).

Figure 2

Step 3

Create another Peak Custom Field, Data Type Real. In this second example:

Divide the result from the previous Custom Field by the ‘Total Area and multiplies by 100’ to report the ‘%Area’ for the Group Peak. The Total Area is already calculated by default in Empower and represents the total area of all integrated peaks in the chromatogram (figure 3).

Figure 3

Step 4

In the first example, the area of the Group Peak is greater than the value, therefore, both the area and %area are reported (figure 4).

Figure 4

Step 5

In the second example, the area of the Group Peak is less than the value, therefore, the %Area is 0 (figure 5).

Figure 5

It’s that easy!

Final Note:   You can use either the Pro or QuickStart interface for this tip.

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Next week in Empower Tip #232: We will learn how to quantitate a peak at one wavelength, referencing a calibration curve of a different peak at another wavelength, with the PDA detector.

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