It's another addition to an already bulging sector that can boast a host of manufacturers vying for the top spot that include Agilent Technologies, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, Thermo Electron and Varian.
The competition has resulted in a rapid expansion during the last few years and now represents more than $2bn (€1.6m) in 2005 sales.
The Clarus 600 series Gas Chromatograph (GC) and Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometers (GC/MS) are powered by a patent-pending oven design, which PerkinElmer claim delivers the fastest combined heat-up and cool-down rates for a conventional gas chromatograph on the market.
This enables laboratories to reduce analytical cycle times, improve sample throughput, and ultimately increase their return on investment.
"While the GC market spans a variety of industries and applications, all share the need for faster analytical cycle times," said Robert Friel, President of PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences.
"The redesigned oven in the Clarus 600 GC minimises injection-to-injection time, enabling any lab to shorten its cycle times without modifying methods or compromising results," he added.
According to BCC Research, the growth in the chromatography market is due to the development of new niche markets and increased demand for routine environmental testing. The market research firm also predicts that there will be a push from the clinical testing sector.
The major users of chromatography are the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, which hold almost 60 per cent of the market share, with the chemical industry (6 per cent) and the food and beverage industry (10 per cent) making up the remainder.
The Clarus 600 series has been designed to address the needs of the full spectrum of GC and GC/MS users, including environmental contract, forensics, petrochemical and chemical quality-control (QC) laboratories.
The new oven in the Clarus 600 GC can cool from 450 to 50 degrees C in approximately two minutes, compared with other conventional GC ovens that require four to six minutes.
By accelerating the cool-down time, customers can increase the number of samples analysed per day in their labs.
This improved cooling capability also enables the chromatographic separation of very volatile compounds at temperatures lower than those practical on other commercially available systems today, providing broader analytical capability.