In my institute we plan to change weekly wash to a daily wash with hot water of the HPLC but we need to know how will it affect the check valve or how will it impact other sensitive parts of the HPLC like detector.
If you use buffers solutions or salt addition in the eluent for example in HIC, you need to wash salt deposits, otherwise you can demage the system.
Regards
GB
Dear Selina,
After running HPLC with a mobile phase containing buffer solution you usually wash with high percentage of water in addition to some organic solvent to clean the buffer from the system and the column. You will need then to decrease the water percentage gradually and probably go to 100 organic solvent to reserve your column. If you then remove your column from the system containing 100% organic, this means you already washed the rest of the buffer but you can use hot water e.g. 60C (but with gradual switching from 100% organic) without problem.
all the best,
Sami
Hi Selina,
You didn't specify which type of mobile phases you are running, but as mentioned by the others in case when using buffered solutions (with some organic modifier contents). Salt precipitates are detrimental for your LC system. To avoid problems:
(1) use piston back flush on your pumps with aqueous wash solution (with/or without a small percentage of the organic modifier. The same used in mobile phase). Make sure to replace this wash solution regularly.
(2) Always keep the flow on when not performing analysis (unless you flush the system after running your sequence). A low flow rate is sufficient to economise mobile phase.
(3) Replace your mobile phases regularly. Especially aqueous buffered solutions with low organic are a source of fungi/bacterial growth.
(3) Regarding washing. Hot water solutions should not be a problem and is effective for removal of salt deposits from pump heads. see for instance some maintenance suggestions from Agilent:
https://www.agilent.com/cs/library/usermanuals/public/BestPractice_en.pdf
Regards, Hendrik
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