Contamination Check
If contamination of any compound is detected, this method can quickly check to see if it is coming from your SPE-03 system, pressurized air/nitrogen supply, or solvent.
Run a "clean sys" method using your final collection solvent as solvent 1.
Place 8 new SPE cartridges on the SPE-03
Place 8 fraction tubes in the fraction rack.
Run the following method
Action | Inlet 1 | Flow | Volume | Description |
Elute W2 | MeOH | 10 | 5 | Clean cartridges with 5mL solvent |
Air-Purge W2 | Air | 10 | 5 | Purge solvent from cartridges |
Collect 1 | MeOH | 5 | 8 | Collect 8mL of solvent through solvent and cartridge lines |
Air-Purge 1 | Air | 10 | 5 | Purge remaining solvents into fractions. This is your 1st set of fractions to analyze for contamination from solvent and cartridge lines |
Wait | Manual Resume | System will pause, replace fraction tubes with new ones | ||
Clean | MeOH | 10 | 8 | Deliver 8mL of solvent to sample lines |
Collect | Sample | 5 | 12 | Collect solvent from sample lines to analyze for contamination from sample lines, extra 4mL as air purge. This is your 2nd set of fractions to analyze for additional contamination from sample lines. |
Wait | Manual Resume | System will pause, replace fraction tubes with new ones. | ||
Blow N2 | Time-based | 5 min | Dry cartridges with N2 for 5 mins. | |
Collect 1 | MeOH | 5 | 8 | Collect 8mL of solvent through solvent and cartridge lines to analyze for contamination from nitrogen source. |
Air-purge 1 | Air | 10 | 5 | Purge remaining solvents into fractions. This is your 3rd set of fractions to analyze for contamination from nitrogen supply. |
Directly pipet 8 mL of MeOH from the solvent bottle on the SPE-03 into a fraction tube as control.
Evaporate and analyze all 3 sets of fractions and 1 control.
Compare the contamination levels from the 3 locations as well as control to see which was the main contributor.