Fluorous solid-phase extraction (F-SPE) cartridges are packed with silica gel

containing a perfluorooctylethylsilyl (Si(CH2)2C8F17) bonded phase. Fluorous silica separates compounds based primarily on fluorine content. It selectively retains fluorous molecules while non-fluorous organic compounds, regardless of polarity, are not retained.Following completion of a reaction involving a fluorous-tagged molecule, the reaction mixture is loaded onto an F-SPE cartridge. Using a fluorophobic wash such as 80:20 MeOH:H2O, the nonfluorous organic compounds are washed off the cartridge. The fluorous compounds are then washed off the cartridge using a fluorophilic second wash such as MeOH, acetone or THF. The loading capacity for fluorous SPE is typically between 5-10% by weight of fluorous silica gel. The cartridge can be regenerated by washing thoroughly with acetone or THF and reused multiple times. Tubes may posses florous compounds bound with high affinity to the tube walls.

Disposable. Regeneration may not provide stable performance.

SPE cartridges are for single-use only. Even after thorough washing procedures you cannot be sure to have your cartridge purified from 100% of the previous sample (or as you asked: carry-over from previous samples can not be excluded).

I'm sorry! 

your question is not in my field.

I often use ENV cartridges which can be regenerated easily with high concentration of organic solvent (e.G. pure acetonitril), they change its colour during this step. After conditioning with water I get as good or better results like with new once. Because the new resin has also impurities. Therefore the conditioning step is recommended. But you must know which components will stay on the phase from yopur sampe which is not so easy for unkown samples. 

With C18 phase I use always new cartidges, because there I always find impurities of matrix of the before analysed sample.

See the recommendations for cartridges use.

I use them to hold the pollutions in biological samples. Any washing does not guarantee 100% clearing.

There is no YES or NO answer to this particular question. Everything will depend on both your anayte(s), matrix and SPE-column properties.

1- You need to know how easier your analyte(s) of interest is eluted to 100% from the SPE, which is not easy to determine. If you do, you should first develop an SOP and valid regeneration method to prove that the regenerated SPE columns are 100% clean with no matrix effect interferences, no carry over effect, with same recovery and reproductible. In this case, you can freely regenerate your SPE-columns and still be effecient in your experiment.

2- If you can't go through all those and guarantee the above requirements then SPE-column should be disposable.

Hope these would be helpfull though it comes little late.

I guess you want to regenerate your columns for economical reasons or possibly some environmental aspect. In both cases you should be careful. First of all regeneration takes time, and unless you have plenty of time and small labour costs this is often not very well invested money. Secondly a poor regeneration might cause severe problems later in terms of trouble shooting since (as mentioned above) it might be hard to know that regeneration is 100% perfect. It get even worse if your data set is to be delivered to an external party who paid you to do the job. You might have to redo all your analysis unless you have traceability in your data. I would never add regeneration of SPE cartridges into my SOP. Also remember that regeneration often requires additional organic solvents which will have an environmental impact. So overall. I would not do regeneration unless there are very special reasons to do so. Bests, Erland

I assume they can be pretty good regenerable in some cases, when you firstly apply only a wee bit polluted samples onto the column  and then you use it for a contaminated matrix, such as surface water or wastewater.

Let's say the first use can be a commercial use with drinking water (it has only limited amount of Total Organic Carbon) that shoud be relatively clean after washing and elution steps. Carry over can be monitored with a blank.

The second use could be start of method development for surface or wastewater (dirtier matrix), where you only need to monitor, if you get a reasonable recovery of target analytes or if changing pH value is beneficial for recovery or not. 

I am about trying it this week, if I get similar recoveries to former results, when I had used brand new columns for comparing recoveries changing one variable (pH or elution mixture). Matrix was WW.

Theoretically makes me my assumption sense, since I got recoveries close to 1 with drinking water. So the residues after first step are very little. Wastewater for the second step needs to be spiked most likely at a higher spike level, so eventual residues after first elution or even rinsing  may be neglected.

Of course it depends - if you want to spend the time testing it. Cost for rinsing should not be high, when applying some (1-2 ml) MeOH, ACN, THF or DCM or HEX.

In another thread, Michal Dziurka stated, that capacity of a SPE column ranges in milligrams, for example 3 mg at a 30 mg cartridge. If a drinking water has TOC up to 5 mg/l (Czech limit), after applying 100 ml or even 200 ml of the DW, capacity should not be over. And definitely not after elution or even rinsing. 

Regards, Milan

According to my knowledge, SPE includes many different techniques, of which for some techniques, the column can be used multiple times. Obvious Example: Anion and cation exchange columns.

I agree with Janvier Engelbert Agbokponto and Milan H. on this one.

1. Then in the case of replicate analysis, what would we say, wouldn't it be ok to use the same SPE for each of the replicate samples