Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ChromaChron (Development and commercialisation of a new purification system for contaminant-free radiocarbon dating)
Reporting period: 2019-06-01 to 2020-11-30
The main aim of the ChromaChron project was to develop a new user-friendly method for compound specific dating. This method has not yet been adopted by other radiocarbon laboratories in large part because of the challenges associated with quantifying background carbon amounts, chromatographic column bleed, poor reproducibility and the lengthy time required for each sample. We have already overcome all of these problems with the exception of the last which we aimed to overcome with this Proof of Concept. We tested different chromatographic systems and different chromatographic columns from different manufacturers. This screening allowed us to identify the ideal characteristics of the chromatography system to use and with which chromatographic column. We were able to buy such system from Agilent thanks to additional funding we secured from UK research council. More work is however still needed (and ongoing) to fully optimise the new method. Then, although the POC ended, we are still actively working on this project and we aim to get the method available in the coming months to all other research facilities interested in compound specific analyses of amino acids. Our work was obviously impacted by the Covid-19 crisis.