Bonehead mistake

[Ghost Writer]

I inadvertently think I injected hexane/water mix samples onto my capillary column (SP-2560; 100 m). A "solvent front" type peak follows my typical solvent front peak but does not seem to have affected the rest of the chromatogram. Did I ruin the column, the GC or the chromatogram? I use a Clarus 500 with helium as the carrier fueled by air and hydrogen. Thanks for your input on my bonehead move.

[DR]

small injections? fairly hot injector w/ >>100°C oven & injector?

You should be fine (just don't make a habit of it)

[Ghost Writer]

Updating you on my mistake, DR; I am currently running a known "good" sample and it seems fine. Thanks for letting me freak out. I am trying to seperate out the sample by centrifugation and sampling the top layer (if it seperates). What do you think?

[Consumer Products Guy]

How did you get hexane and water to mix?

[Ghost Writer]

Obviously I didn't mix hexane and water but what I did do was get something in with my hexane during processing that causes the sample to mostly freeze (which it shouldn't do if it was hexane) at - 20 C. The possibilities include water (which, you are correct, won't mix with hexane), methanol, isopropanol or diethyl ether. I've decided to reprocess the samples with more care this time (as I've done in the past) to get the quality I'm used to. By the way, centrifugation did not cause any stratification (which didn't surprise me too much).