Chromatography Forum

Since my first days with HPLC I've been struggeling with ghost peaks during gradient elution, and according to the numerous posts here in the forum, I'm not the only one .
There have been solutions in the past like using the extraction disc by 3M (?, never used it) for filtering the eluents.... now I've seen advertisement for a product developed by Shimadzu targeting at removing ghost peaks "in-situ":
http://www.shimadzu.com/an/hplc/ghost-trap-ds.html

Looks very promising, but in the end it's just a product flyer . Does anyone have hands-on experience with this one? Is it that good? And (not unimportant) how long does it last usually? If you have to change that guard daily, it's not worth a try...

There's another product with a bit different naming, don't know if it's the same one:
http://ghost-guard.iip.de/?page_id=40
"Ghost peak protector" immediately caught my eye .

The idea has been around for a long time. Look at the gradient artifacts tutorial, about 8 minutes in: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=19085

What that product (both links look to be the same product) does differently is to use a cartridge packed with something that binds the junk so tightly that it doesn't come off even with high levels of strong solvent. That makes it usable with both high-pressure and low-pressure mixing systems.

What that product (both links look to be the same product) does differently is to use a cartridge packed with something that binds the junk so tightly that it doesn't come off even with high levels of strong solvent. That makes it usable with both high-pressure and low-pressure mixing systems.

And that's the thing that caught mye eye. I've used short ordinary C18 columns with high pressure systems after pump A at some time in the past in order to get rid of junk. But here in our lab most of the machines are low-pressure mixing, so that's not feasible. If this ghost guard thingy really works and does its job for a reasonable time, it might be an option to install it with these too...

Since about 2 years we used the Ghost Guard (IIP). It is very easy to use and give good success!!
We (Qnuality control lab for pharmaceutical analysis) use the ghost guard for all HPLC-methods using gradient elution!
You get good results and it is less expensive then the Ghost Trap DS from Shimadzu!!!!

Ask for an coulmn for free testing (http://ghost-guard.iip.de).

In my opinion it would be good to invest some money in a good training "HPLC method development" with gradients..............
I never found a ghost in my chromatograms, only unexpected peaks. Most came from detergence used in the lab dish washer, so I rinsed all flasks etc. with distilled water and ISP before I started doing sample preparation, diluting etc.!
A good SPE protocol maybe will also help. To use a guard column is always recommended.
I remember a movie were some people hunted ghosts, called ghost busters.............

In my opinion it would be good to invest some money in a good training "HPLC method development" with gradients..............
I never found a ghost in my chromatograms, only unexpected peaks. Most came from detergence used in the lab dish washer, so I rinsed all flasks etc. with distilled water and ISP before I started doing sample preparation, diluting etc.!
A good SPE protocol maybe will also help. To use a guard column is always recommended.
I remember a movie were some people hunted ghosts, called ghost busters.............

I'm quite sure that you have seen these ghosts in your chromatograms, too .
This might be just another case of misleading nomenclature - with "ghost peaks" I'm referring to peaks in a gradient chromatogramm caused by on-column enrichment of trace impurities in the eluents. It's an inherent problem with gradients. Depending on the eluents, the gradient program, the detection wavelength and other details of the specific method you may or may not have problems with this.
But it's nothing that can be cured with SPE cleanup of the samples. And the guard column in this case is not a classical guard to protect the analytical column, it's an "on-the-fly eluent cleaner".