1) The large air bath column oven comes standard on the 8610C chassis.  This oven will fit a single column coiled on a 7" diameter cage, or multiple columns coiled on smaller cages or bundled without a cage.  This oven is rated to 400ºC and is equipped with a 600 watt heater and fast cool-down fans.
2) The small air bath column oven comes standard on the Model 310 GC.  This oven will fit a single column coiled within 5 inches diameter ( 3.5" or 4" coil size preferred ).  This oven is rated to 400ºC, is equipped with a 600 watt heater and fast cool-down fans.  Because the small air bath oven uses the same heater wattage and cool down fans as the large air bath oven, yet has a smaller volume, it both heats and cools faster. Dual independently programmable small air bath ovens are installed on the Model 8610D GC chassis. The second GC oven is 4.5" wide, so only columns coiled smaller than 4" can be used.
3) The "Virtual Oven" is optionally available on the 8610C, 310 and 110 chassis.  The Virtual Oven provides for programmable heating and very rapid cooling of a 1/8" o.d. packed column up to 2 meters in length using low voltage AC to resistively heat the column.  The column itself becomes the heater.  The advantages of the "Virtual Oven" are:
  a) Temperature ramp rates up to 99 degrees/min are possible
  b) Cool-down is very fast ( 250 to 50 in 1 minute )
  c) Temperature control very close to ambient ( ambient+3ºC )
  d) Low power consumption
Since the "Virtual Oven" draws much less power than the air bath oven, the total GC power consumption drops from about 800 watts for a simple 1 detector GC with an air bath oven to 300 watts for the same GC equipped with the "Virtual Oven".  At 300 watts, it is practical to operate the GC from an inverter connected to the cigarette lighter of a vehicle.