lab ambient air contaminated

[MestizoJoe]

I'm pretty sure the lab air is contaminated today. I have a huge peak in the void and a few later eluting peaks I've never seen before.

Is this sewer gas or work trucks or something?

[chromatographer1]

Anybody doing anything in the lab?

Open windows?

I used to see diesel fumes from delivery trucks and acetonitrile and methanol from LCs in the other lab on the same floor.

And don't get me started about aftershave and perfume !

best wishes,

Rod

[MestizoJoe]

Perfumes too? Wow. I'm going to check where our cooling system gets air from. I saw peaks in the void coming off before eto (boiling point 10C) and then some heavier contaminants. I'm guessing there is construction going on outside.

Here is the lab air (top) and helium (bottom).

[larkl]

How about phantom peaks that turn out to be hand lotion after inlet liner chageout? Wear those gloves.

[chromatographer1]

I won't even try to describe the peaks I saw after having a pepperoni pizza lunch once.

The sensitivity of chromatography can be quite extraordinary today.

best wishes,

Rod

[MestizoJoe]

It turned out to be diesel fumes. We had a power outage which kicked on the generator (after letting my GC lose power, HPLCs were all fine). The generator was strategically placed right by our air intake for the HVAC system.

[MSCHemist]

Agilent shows french fry chromatograms at all their presentations when talking about handling columns and liners.

[GoinBoardin]

One of my syringe rinse bottles had acetonitrile in it, but I wasn't rinsing with it, and I could detect it. Seemed the syringe would pick up some ACN by simply passing over the septa capped bottle. The peak was gone once I removed the bottle. Eye opener for a rookie chromatographer.