Chromatography Forum

Hello,

I am wondering if anyone has any advice on best practices for cleaning and maintaining a headspace syringe.

The syringes and needles clog and eventually jam if I do not clean them after each use. I run on average 30 headspace samples per run (a few times a week). There is only 3 ml of brine and one gram of sample in each 20 ml headspace vial, but for some reason traces of salt make their way into the needle from the brine.

I was rinsing the syringes by drawing water in and out with the needle attached. I ruined the adhesive of one of them because of the excessive force applied to the conjunction. I had better luck once I removed the needle and began to clean the syringes by drawing water in and out of them through the wider opening (no needle attached).

Has anyone had similar experience? I think both of the syringes that I have been rinsing this way are losing accuracy. I just bought a sonicator in hopes that it will provide a gentler means of cleaning the headspace syringes.

I appreciate your feedback.

Does the autosampler rinse the syringe with water between samples or do you have to do it manually?

If a water rinse could be performed between each sample that might help keep it cleaner. I know each sampler has different ways of doing this, not sure which ones actually rinse with a solvent.

I'm almost certain you've ruled it out for some reason, but can you not do total evaporation headspace?

I am not sure how that would be relevant. The brine is just to assist the low boiling VOC (allyl-isothiocyanate) into partitioning into the headspace. Hopefully sonicating will be a gentler way to clean salt residue from the brand new syringe I ordered.

Thanks for your thoughts on this James.