Chromatography Forum

Should an Agilent GC, Headspace Analyzer, and / or Micro-GC be connected to a circuit with GFI at the breaker box?

My company is updating the breaker boxes to GFI; but, I seem to remember a blog or web article indicating GC ovens should not be on a GFI / GFCI.

Advice will be most appreciated.

I think that you must be remembering wrong - my whole lab (and every other lab I've ever worked in) gets power through the circuit breaker variety of ground fault interrupters.

Peter

I received this reply from an Agilent Customer Support Engineer:
"The instruments will cause a GFI breaker to fault. You cannot run the instruments on a GFI breaker."

Since another person on the forum is running their GCs on GFI at the breaker box, I guess we will try this out.

Is the worst case being the breakers will trip and need reset? Or, can the GCs be harmed with sudden loosing then regaining power when the breakers trip?

I'm puzzled - what kind of protection does the Agilent engineer recommend ? Wire fuses ?

As far as I know all circuits have to have ground fault breakers to protect people from electrocution.

Peter

I think the electrical code in the U.S. only requires GFCI in places where water is involved. I residential they are only required in the bathroom and kitchen areas where the plugs only have two prongs, which means no dedicated ground.

It should depend on how the equipment handles the grounding of the chassis whether or not it will cause a problem with the breakers. If the equipment sends any current back through the ground circuit then it will trip the breakers so you have to watch and make sure you have very low neutral to ground conditions in the lab.

From How Stuff Works

"A GFCI is much more subtle. When you look at a normal 120-volt outlet in the United States, there are two vertical slots and then a round hole centered below them. The left slot is slightly larger than the right. The left slot is called "neutral," the right slot is called "hot" and the hole below them is called "ground." If an appliance is working properly, all electricity that the appliance uses will flow from hot to neutral. A GFCI monitors the amount of current flowing from hot to neutral. If there is any imbalance, it trips the circuit. It is able to sense a mismatch as small as 4 or 5 milliamps, and it can react as quickly as one-thirtieth of a second."

I'm puzzled - what kind of protection does the Agilent engineer recommend ? Wire fuses ?

As far as I know all circuits have to have ground fault breakers to protect people from electrocution.

Peter

I have two 5890s running on circuit breakers that I know have built-in GFCIs. No power problems after >6 years.