destruction of sintered glass inlet filters

[lmh]

A very careful technician in my lab has just brought me two Agilent sintered glass solvent inlet filters that were used on an ion chromatography system (not in our lab. Unfortunately we don't know the details of everything that might have gone through it). The sintered parts of the inlet filters have almost disappeared (there's just a fringe left where the sintered glass joins on to the main body). The clear glass body appears undamaged, but is full of white particulate solid. I can't see if it's mashed-up glass or salt (but it doesn't seem to dissolve in water).

I've never seen anything like this before, and I'm really puzzled. Has anyone seen this? What can have happened to these filters?

We can, of course, simply replace them and wash the system as best we can, but I really don't like the idea of not understanding how this happened, what else might have happened to the rest of the system, and how we can avoid any such thing happening again.

[rhaefe]

Just guessing here:

-high pH solvents (NaOH, Na2CO3...) will eventually dissolve glass (and the sintered part is probably more prone to such an attack).
-a cleaning procedure gone wrong. I have known someone who used diluted HF to "revive" older filter funnels with sintered glass disk (Buchner style). After the process the flow rates were back to normal (the porosity of course increased).

[lmh]

thanks.. it may have been exposed to NaOH, and who knows what concentrations have been used?