Chromatography Forum

Good afternoon! I recently purchased a new Clarus 500, and I am having a hard time running any injections. When the IQ, OQ, and PQ were performed, the technician set Helium as the carrier gas on the computer, but the facility guys say that the machine is using Nitrogen as the carrier gas. That was a few months ago, and I am trying to develop a method to run samples. I've built my method using TotalChrom, but every time I try to run samples, the flame tries to light on the machine, and after 3 tries, I get an error message that says "Failed to ignite flame". I have the air set to 450 mL/min, and the hydrogen set to 45 mL/min. Does anyone have any suggestions on why my flame isn't lighting? Thanks!

FID flame out is one of the most common problems on the forum. Have a search through the archives and you will find a lot of useful advice.

The first step is to measure the actual flows to the detector using an independent flow meter, not the on-board pneumatics. You also need to trace the gas lines to make sure the you have the right gasses connected to the right places on the instrument.

Bear in mind that if you use nitrogen as carrier gas your minimum analysis times will be approximately double what they would be with helium.

Peter