Chromatography Forum

I am attempting to clean an HPLC column, and the protocol recommends washing with 1M HCl. I have an Agilent 1100 HPLC system (quad pump, degasser, autosampler, diode array detector), and fear that my system's components may not be suitable for handling this relatively concentrated acid. Is this a reasonable concern, or are standard Agilent 1100's happy to handle HCl solutions? (Of course, I would thoroughly purge the HCl from the system after washing the column, so that HCl isn't hanging around to corrode parts over the long-term.) Thanks for your HPLC wisdom!

If the user manuals do not explicitly state that you can use that cleaning procedure, don't do it.Wash your columns on a separate system(we use pumps from retired systems).

I sure as hell wouldn't introduce HCl into my 1100. The only thing more corrosive than the chloride ion is the chloride ion under acidic conditions.

Many years ago I worked for a contract lab where we had a product up on stability and the test method used for either the impurities/assay used about 1M HCl in the mobile phase.

I can't tell you how nervous we were with running this method. We dedicated one of our 1100's to this method. We would use that 1100 for other methods, but we would only use the 1M HCl method on that particular 1100 HPLC.

Part of the procedure was to thoroughly passivate the system first before every run that was made.

We ran that stability method for year and a half to two years... never had any unusual problems with the 1100 during that time.

It's not something you really want to do, but if you passivate the system every time you do it, you might come out okay in the end.