What to do about a contaminated LC-MS?

[Baruch]

I have a difficult decision to make and need some advice. For two years I have been trying to find the source/sources of inorganic ion contamination on our LC-MS. The system had high background, bad linearity and visible precipitation of inorganic salts into the MS source which on one occasion damaged the probe and electronic board of the MS which had to be replaced. When the eluent coming from the LC was evaporated visible precipitates resulted. So, the contamination levels were high. The supplier all along either denied that there was a problem or implied that we had somehow used contaminated solvents at some stage. However, we did all the tests to show that all our solvents are clean. It is anyway strange to find contaminants from an initial contamination still precipitating out in such large amounts after two years of rinsing with clean LC-MS solvents. Now I have confirmed by painstaking leaching experiments of the LC system as well as expensive analyses by external labs that the origin of the contaminants were all along parts supplied by the supplier. These parts were installed at installation. So, for at least 1 and a half years highly contaminated solvent has been pumped through the entire system and into the MS. In addition there were the powdery precipitates found covering the MS source from time to time. One of those events took place very recently and we are not sure what the repercussions of that will be.

My gut feel is to ask for our money back or at the least a replacement of the ENTIRE system since it has been exposed to contaminants which might result in serious and mysterious breakdowns in future. Some of the contaminant ions were chlorine which is bad, bad, bad for stainless steel. Then there is the possibility of electronics that has been damaged by these events but is not showing the damage yet. That might mean huge expenses in future. I think this is an unnecessary risk for us to take and I want to ask for a complete replacement to a brand new system or our money back. Then there's the 2 years in which I couldn't work but was paid and all the expenses to solve the problem ourselves. What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree with the course of action I am planning to propose? Unfortunately we have completely lost trust in the supplier due to mostly their approach to this problem which resulted in wasting our time and money as well as their lack of knowledge of and quality control on their own instrument.

[Gizmo]

Your potential losses sound like they would easily be in the mid to high 6 figures at least. If you have solid evidence like you say I would definitely be presenting it to legal dept if you have one. Was this a used instrument? I ask because my experience has been that used instruments can be little boxes of unending gremlins - not always of course - but they certainly can be. That said I've never had anything as devastating as what you describe - two years of professional life wasted on such garbage..terrible. I say go for it if you have the goods in whatever capacity you are able.

[leadazide]

Assuming that you have already tried the diplomatic path with the supplier than legal action could be a solution... But be prepared for a looong fight..

I will cross my fingers for you and hope you will post updates here as the case proceeds..

Btw.. How does an electronic board fail due to precipitation in the source???

[Baruch]

No, this was not a used instrument. Brand new in fact. Therefore we didn't expect there to be such problems coming from the instrument itself. We investigated all other options first and lastly, when all the evidence pointed to the instrument still, the long road of leaching from various parts of the system began. However, this gave us the breakthrough we needed. Without that work we would never have solved the problem.

We can take the legal route now. I do not expect the supplier to repay us our money or expenses. We will ask of course, but as usual that will fall on deaf ears. I am most concerned about damage to the MS electronics that may surface only later. Then I will also have to do my homework about the influence of long-term exposure of stainless steel and other metal parts to certain inorganic ions such as chlorine. Any advice about possible problems we can expect on the metal parts and the MS electronics would be wonderful. The supplier also recently passivated the system using phosphoric acid and now today I read it is very hard to get rid of inside the MS because it is "sticky" to metal

[Baruch]

Leadazide

I'm not sure how the electronic board could have failed. All I do know is that someone warned me to switch of the MS when he heard what had happened. Apparently such precipitates can cause short-circuits in the electronics of the MS. We had no electronic problems on the MS before the incident, but after they had cleaned the source and switched on again the probe electronics was shot and a very expensive board had also failed. Of course the supplier vehemently denied that there could be any correlation between the precipitates in the source and the electronic damage, since they didn't find any precipitate powders in the mass analyzer region. However, I'm not convinced. The system is under high vacuum. So, any powder that had entered might already have been swept out by the vacuum. Another interesting possibility could be that the sheer amount of ions entering the MS was so large that the electronics was damaged. Hard to say. All I've learned through this whole ordeal is to trust my gut feel about something and about people. Somehow I just knew something was not right from the start no matter how people denied it and tried to normalize the abnormal.