Chromatography Forum

Hi,

I start a new departement in the lab I work and I have over 20 years experience in icp-ms IC etc... Gas chromatography is new for me.

I analyze petroleum hydrocarbon by gc-fid. The main problem I have is when I do a maintenance like change liner septum I always have lot of contamination. I contact the manufacture about this and the support said to inject my solvent lot of time (hexane). I'm little bit confused by this. I always use thong to manipulate all the part so I don't know how I introduce the contamination.

Is it a good way to bake the injector to remove the contamination?

Thank you!

When you change the liner and septum do you also remove about 5cm of the analytical column also?

Sometimes the contamination can be at the tip of the column if several dirty samples have been analyzed.

Also good to cool the inlet, remove the column and use solvent and a cotton swab to clean the inlet before inserting the new liner as some contamination can be outside the liner and take time to flush out after the change. I also normally place a beaker below the inlet and wash with a few ml of solvent before reinstalling the liner and column just to be certain it is clean.