Chromatography Forum

Well I am going to find out just how durable Agilent equipment is today. The HVAC is out and I am trying to run volatiles in a room that is now 89F and 70% humidity and it is just now noon!

Last week it did it and we lost our Thermo ICP because the cooling water doesn't bypass when it is off and it formed condensation inside and fried the circuit board when the girl tied to light it. I hope this is fixed soon, my samples are coming up on holding time quick.

By the way, lab coats are now optional unless you are working with acid or hazardous chemicals

Don't open any compressed air valves until the lines have been cleared. Without chillers, they'll fill w/ condensate as well!

Seems we made it through the night and the HVAC was fixed this morning (I think). By the time I left it was 36C in the volatiles lab and my starting oven temp is 36C, so it was taking about an hour for what usually is a 30 minute run. It came a light rain shower just after I left and that helped cool the building.

By mid afternoon the floors were completely wet and it was like walking on ice even with textured floor paint.

I am surprised how well the calibrations held through the temperature swing. The GCMS units were all stable, the ICPMS were not so we didn't even run those. Our GC/ECDs were having really high backgrounds and we think maybe there was something in the lines that was baking off at the higher temperatures, but we can't be sure(we have building wide gas supplied from an outside tank farm and the lines run along the ceiling ). If the background comes down today it will confirm it.