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- Posts: 543
- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 2:36 pm
- Location: UK
He then violated SOP A 1 Engage Brain Before Any Action and held the beaker above the FID, leading to rapid implementation of procedure OSHIT 3 applicable in cases of small quantities of flaming liquids held by hand in glass containers.
Sometimes I wonder how any of us lived long enough to be reminiscing on Chromforum.
It set me thinking.
From experience - in chronological order
Boiling benzene in an open beaker over a Bunsen burner in the school lab.
Slightly before my time but seeing photos of the oven door of a GC blown off and embedding itself into the wall after a hydrogen leak in the oven. Later GCs had a spring loaded inner door to relieve the pressure.
In the early days of LC, after gradient elution, the only way to tell if the starting solvent conditions had been re-established was to hold your finger under the eluent and sniff. Hexane could really make your head spin and MeOH/CHCl3 would really sting an open cut- even worse if accidentally spilt onto your lap:-)
Modifying a Pye moving wire LC detector. This was the closest to a "universal " detector. Essentially the eluent dripped onto a fine wire that moved between two spools. The wire went through a heated chamber and the sample evaporated off into an FID
http://www.chromatography-online.org/Tr ... s_5_64.php
My "clever" modification of adding an air jet to change the drips into a spray onto the wire to coat the wire more evenly to improve the detection level worked brilliantly - for about 60 seconds. After which the vapour ignited and set fire to the instrument.
Whilst rinsing out my syringe with Tri-sil BSA in pyridine for a manual injection I accidentally injected my left thumb with 10uL - there was a numb spot for many years afterwards.
From the actuarial tables chemists seem to come off lightly.
Ralph
Ralph