There is no given protocol in GE's manual for regeneration of HiTrap Desalting column. So I wonder, is there anybody who reuses this column? How to do that?
It's a size exclusion column, so I one should only need to wash the salts and buffer out of it and store it in 20% ethanol (section 5, p. 13 link below).
I would like to express my personal observation about the SEC gel (for the 50A, silica gel; file HPSEC protein determination method). SEC column is washed by 0.1 M sodium phosphate buffer (pH 2.1)-methanol (50:50, v/v) solution (50-fold volume of the column) at a column temperature of 72 degrees of Centigrade.
It seems surely difficult to regenerate to the original state of the column or gel (see pre-conditioning method for the 300A SEC column in the File SEC column 300A silica). In that paper, I have used to maintain the column condition; i.e., 1st water wash, 2nd 0.1M phosphate buffer (pH 2) wash, and 3rd alcohol wash, and finally water wash; i.e., the regeneration or conditioning of the SEC silica-gel column is surely time-consuming.
Then, it seems similarly difficult to me to re-generate also a synthetic polymer-type SEC gels such as GE's HiTrap Desalting (5 ml) column.