Anyone have any insight on the best way to clean low-mid level concentration nano-particle solutions from stainless line and a stainless steel syringe?
So for cleaning syringes, I've been known to put the metal components in a bath of oxalic acid and water, in a beaker, and sonicate with rinses for a couple hours. Then remove, flush with water, ethanol, acetone, wipe dry, and autoclave at a couple hundred degrees C. The last attribute is repeated rinsing in solvents, ensuring the syringe is in good working order, then rinse/autoclave for storage or return to service.
Tubing is a bit more fun. If a short length, coiling up and soaking in an all-purpose cleaner while sonicating does a lot of good work. If longer, fitting a loop with a solvent bubbler on one end and a drain on another will allow you to flush liquid through the lines. In both cases, at the end I usually try to stick to solvents only- excess water (get rid of APC residue), ethanol, & acetone in sequence. Once done, I'll hook up the loop to a vacuum and use a heat gun to heat the line from the furthest distance moving toward the vacuum source. doing that a few times, then flushing with inert gas (e.g. argon, N2) will usually clean to my satisfaction. Take a day on it, and plan it out.
If there's larger deposits in the tube, after the above cleaning, cut off the ends and replace any fittings (e.g. compression fittings) to ensure that no contamination built up that can lead to leaks.
Last thing- if the tube is copper, just replace it as cleaning attempts can brittle the copper and lead to microcracks. If stainless steel, worth a shot to clean it. Regardless, if the line is 'mission critical' e.g. related up uptime for research, make sure that the contamination can't happen again (an in-line gravity trap or filters are helpful). Spares are also a good idea.
Thanks for the info Curtis Guild . It is kind of difficult to determine the best cleaning procedure on our end since we do not know the kind of nanoparticle we are dealing with. I work in a service lab and the clients samples are all Trade Secrets