Cleaning/restoring Ion-exchange media

[Pernath]

Dear colleagues!

I would like to ask you for advice. In the lab We have a couple of ion-exchange columns of Mono-type (i.e. Mono-Q and MonoS) that were purchased a long time ago. These columns were seriously misused and neglected. I discovered that medium in these columns is partially dried, there are dark circles or darkened areas on beads. Thus I have following questions:
1) Is it possible to bring these columns “back to life” (as we cannot buy new and I would like to have these for my experimental work)?
2) How these should be sanitized? Are there any special tricks other than procedure described at “GE” web-page?
3) How to make darkened beads white again? How the color change influence the resolution properties of medium?
I would be grateful if anybody could give me an answer to these questions.

[Gerhard Kratz]

My answers are:
1) it is possible, depending of the resin status
2) just follow the cleaning procedure of the manufacturer
3) colour does not effect the resolution, to make it white is not possible.

Good luck

[piracetam]

try running a high salt buffer (1-2 M) through it at low flowrate in the reverse direction

[Pernath]

Dear Gerhard,

Thank You very much for your reply. I want to invest some time and effort in order to restore these things. It is really a disaster when equipment that costs thousands of euro is almost destroyed by people's carelessness.