I have been working through a textbook this week that has a copyleft statement on every page, and was written by a government scientist who did not get paid to do it. When you access it through the publisher website there is a copyright and they're charging $200 for access.
Replacing the human expert with a word-guessing machine is a logical progression in their unabashed rent seeking.
The university is exploiting your idealism to get you to work without being paid enough. You aren't "in a position to help people", you are doing a job for an organization with revenues. They could allocate more revenue to accomplish this work without forcing you to work until 1 AM, but they have made the choice that the work is not worth paying for.
That being said, most good people will go the extra mile if they think it can make a difference, but I see too many who take full responsibility on themselves and "cover" for financially-motivated organizational decisions, which in turn encourages the people who make those decisions to cut even more.
Based on my experience with GCMS, if you fart into some activated carbon, you might be able to store it for a long time. To release the smell you'd heat your "sample" up to about 250°C, which you could do in a hot oven or maybe stovetop burner
Going full Infinite Jest