Lucky?, No. Waters spares were/are very expensive here.
The yellow-gold colour of the acidic ferric solution was immediately obvious, as the 6000A was primed each day by purging 10 mls of solvent into the supplied clear glass syringe.
I've no wish to turn this into some dramatic event that all users should worry about, but I thought reminding the original poster might be a good idea, given they were regularly switching between aqueous and methylene chloride, which may be an uninhibited grade.
The wet hydrolysis reaction is catalysed by iron and other metals, so
any wet dichloromethane sitting in metal crevices has the potential to induce corrosion.
Anyone who has worked industrial scale halogenated solvent degreasing will be aware that any rust and water in/on the solventvrapidly remove any acid acceptance tolerance of such solvents, and metal corrosion starts to appear almost immediately the inhibitors/buffers are depleted.
The corrosion potential of wet methylene chlride is probably due to the relatively high solubility of methylene chloride in water ( about 1.8% @ 20C - twice that of chloroform ), combined with the steep decrease of solubility in water with increasing temperature, the density, and the affinity of any separated material for metal surfaces.
I'm wondering whether the Digg mantra ( " provide photo, or it didn't happen" ) is becoming more pervasive.
Please keep having fun,
Bruce Hamilton
