Pumping Very Low Flow Rates

[adam]

Hello All

I will have an application coming up where we will need to pump very (!!) low flow rates. The lowest flow may be around 0.00001 mL/min.

Any suggestions on the best way to do this. The one idea I had was to use a flow splitter from ASI.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks Adam

[Kostas Petritis]

What is it for this application? Is it to pump a liquid through a chromatographic column (i.e. high backpressure) or not? There are (not a lot) pumps out there that can pump 10 nL per min with a good accuracy...

[adam]

It is a long - and boring - story, but we will be comparing different types of columns and some of them have very low optimal flow rates.

Any other ideas out there as to how to accomplish this?

Thank You
Adam

[Kostas Petritis]

Adam,

It sounds to me like you are trying to analyze some macromolecules or so...

Anyway, this flow rate is pretty low so I doubt a passive splitter is going to give you accurately such small flow rates, especially if you want to operate in gradient conditions. Even nano pumps with active splitters will have a hard time to go that low.

The only pumps which I have seen examples of such low flow rates (i.e. 10 nL/min) with recorded changes of +/- 1 nL/min are the Eksigent nano-pumps...

Good luck...