Page 1 of 1
Column care.
Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 9:26 pm
by pstaunton
Will you damage a column if you pump hot water through it?
Might be a stupid question don't know
Re: Column care.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 11:25 am
by Bigbear
Not stupid. A column can be back flushed with solvents IF the liquid phase is cross linked. Most chromatography supply houses have a "gizmo" to do it. I built my own .
The real question is why do you think you need to rinse your column? Most non volatiles that cause problems get trapped in the first few cm. You can first try snipping off 0.5M
of the column .
Re: Column care.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 1:29 pm
by Peter Apps
Will you damage a column if you pump hot water through it?
Might be a stupid question don't know
Maybe not stupid, but certainly incomplete. What kind of column ? - Bigbear has assumed GC, I would have guessed HPLC, maybe we are both wrong, in which case the answers probably will be as well. And how hot is hot ?
Peter
Re: Column care.
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 10:05 pm
by pstaunton
I usually wash out my system with hot water after using salts. In most cases piping hot.
Re: Column care.
Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 1:59 am
by mattmullaney
Well...I figure you're talking about HPLC columns. The only thing I can say is that, for sure, piping hot water will dissolve the silica more easily than colder water, but columns are often used at pretty high temps (ca. 90 degrees celsius sometimes), so perhaps you wouldn't have to be overly concerned with causing a great deal of damage during a wash of a column with hot water.